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Copyright (c) 2009 Nevada Law Journal
Nevada Law Journal
Spring, 2009
9 Nev. L.J. 580
LENGTH: 43110 words
Article: Agents of (Incremental) Change: From Myra Bradwell to Hillary Clinton
NAME: Gwen Hoerr Jordan*
BIO: * Ph.D., J.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Northern Illinois University, former J. Willard Hurst Legal History Fellow,
University of Wisconsin Law School. The author wishes to thank Arthur McEvoy, Jane Larson, Eric Arnesen, Susan Levine,
Katrin Schultheiss, Felice Batlan, Barbara Babcock, Barbara Welke, Dan Hamilton, Elizabeth Mertz, Stuart Macaulay, Mitra
Sharfi, Laura Singleton, Risa L. Lieberwitz, Marianne Constable, Rima Schultz, the Honorable Joan Humphrey Lefkow, the
Honorable Elaine Bucklo, the participants of the University of Wisconsin Socio-Legal Studies Brownbag, the UW Institute
for Legal Studies Fellows Colloquium, the Chicago Bar Association Alliance for Women, and the comments of a number of
anonymous reviewers on earlier versions of this Article.
LEXISNEXIS SUMMARY:
... For almost two centuries, women's rights activists employed a strategy of law reform campaigns to secure incremental
rights, and ultimately, substantive equality for women. ... The law activists pursued law reforms to secure women's
citizenship rights from two positions: within the existing governmental institutions and within the emerging nongovernmental
women's associations. ... By 1850, at the first National Women's Rights Convention, the activists demanded all states enact
statutory reforms of married women's property rights. ... To be clear, the leaders of the woman suffrage movement continued
to support a broad range of law reform campaigns to advance women's rights in the second half of the nineteenth century, but
they subordinated those efforts to securing the vote. ... Developing Networks to Advance Women's Law Reforms In the
second half of the nineteenth century, many of the women's rights activists who sought a law license created networks with
activist male lawyers to advance their rights claims and continued to employ the ideology of sociological jurisprudence to
support their cause. ... She addressed the issue directly in her brief, drawing on the two dominant arguments used by women's
rights activists: that women were equal in intelligence and ability to men, and that her natural gender attributes, nurture and
compassion, would enhance her ability to practice law. ... In the 1880s, a number of women lawyers joined Myra Bradwell's
efforts to gather and disseminate information on legal issues affecting women and on every female attorney in the United
States and beyond. ... The lawyers acknowledged that they had a different agenda from many women's associations, yet, they
sought to ensure that they would not be excluded from future important events or organizations. " Women lawyers should
have some kind of organization," Ellen Martin, the chair of the law department, explained, "so that they could control their
representation in the general organizations of women." ... Their themes focused on campaigns to attain political equality,
efforts to challenge laws that excluded or limited the rights of women, and strategies to enhance their work as lawyers in the
profession.
HIGHLIGHT:
In this Article, the author asserts that after the Civil War, when the race and gender hierarchies that ordered American
society were vulnerable, a little-studied collection of activist women lawyers led a law reform movement that established
women's rights incrementally. They were among those thinking about and experimenting with different ways of framing,
securing, and enforcing women's full and equal citizenship rights. Their dual status as lawyers and women shaped their goals
and strategies. As lawyers and licensed members of the legal profession, they operated within the conventional institutions of
power - lobbying the legislatures to enact new laws and urging judges to implement a new form of legal reasoning that
supported their claims. As disenfranchised women, they operated within nongovernmental women's associations - gathering
support for their law reform campaigns and using their social capital to pressure governmental institutions to grant women
rights. The author argues that these nineteenth-century law reform campaigns laid the foundation for the campaigns of the
twentieth-century women's rights movement that incrementally transformed the legal status of women in America from a
position of subordinate inequality to a formal equality, but have not been effective in securing women's substantive equality.
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TEXT:
[*581]
Introduction
"I've been an agent of change ... [for thirty-five years] ... I [have] worked to help make the case for [many specific law
reforms]." n1
"Producing positive change[,] translating those words into action is something that is the ... slow, hard, boring of hard
boards in politics ... ." n2
"I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes - not
incremental changes, not small changes." n3
Former Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (and now Secretary of State) and her 2008 presidential campaign embodied the
legacy of the American women's rights movement. For almost two centuries, women's rights activists employed a strategy of
law reform campaigns to secure incremental rights, and ultimately, substantive equality for women. These efforts were
primarily responsible for the transformation of women's social and legal position in American society. Law reforms
transformed women from feme sole and feme covert to citizen in the nineteenth century, secured the vote for women in the
twentieth century, and made possible Senator Clinton's powerful presidential campaign in the twenty-first century. Clinton
acknowledged that despite these progressions, "the journey [isn't] over"; substantive gender inequalities remain. n4 As a
lawyer and politician, she pledged to "overcome [the] barriers and obstacles" that persist through a continued application of
the law reform strategy. n5
[*582] In contrast, in running against Senator Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, then Senator Barack
Obama challenged the continued use of the incremental change strategy. Obama suggested that now was time for a more
effective approach, one that would secure root change. n6 He argued that despite the political courage of past activists or the
import of the legislative victories, "We never built the majority and coalesced the American people around being able to get
the other stuff done," to achieve real equality for all Americans. n7 Senator Obama is not the first to argue for a new strategy.
Over the past two centuries radical feminists and others have advocated for a fundamental restructuring of society and its
institutions, n8 but despite these calls and the shortcomings of the past campaigns, the law reform strategy remains the
primary tool of the women's rights movement. n9 This Article goes back to the beginnings. It examines the origins and
development of the law reform strategy of the women's rights movement to inform the continuing debate on the most
effective means to secure substantive equality for all people in American society.
Women's rights activists began drafting and advocating law reforms that would grant women specific rights in the early
nineteenth century as a means to achieve women's emancipation and equality. n10 They used natural law, the [*583]
Declaration of Independence, and the principles of classical liberalism as the authority for their law reform campaigns and to
shape their conceptions of liberty and equality. n11 They conceived of liberty as the notion that woman, like man, should be
free to pursue her "own true and substantial happiness." n12 They conceived of equality in terms of human rights and argued
that woman, like man, had the right to pursue whatever "station in society as her conscience shall dictate." n13 Thus, the early
women's rights activists did not assert that women were either the same as men or different than men but rather, that men and
women were equally human beings and therefore equally entitled to all human rights and responsibilities.
To actualize their conception of equality, what I will call "substantive equality," women's rights activists developed a
law reform strategy to secure women's legal equality. They believed if they were able to enact positive laws that
fundamentally changed women's legal position from subordinate to equal, women's substantive equality would necessarily
follow. n14 They reasoned that if women were no longer subordinate under the law, the institutions of governance, which were
created on the premise of women's subordination, would have to transform, structurally and operationally, to reflect and
protect women's equality. n15 These transformations would then restructure American society with a new foundation based on
real liberty and substantive equality for all. n16 Over the last quarter century some scholars and activists have challenged this
notion that legal equality will bring substantive equality. n17 The women's [*584] rights movement, nonetheless, continues to
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employ the law reform strategy as its primary tool. n18
The initial law reform campaigns that served as the foundation of the women's rights movement were aimed at
abolishing the common law principle of coverture. n19 This doctrine tied women's legal status to her marital or kin
relationships and rendered a married woman civilly dead. n20 Therefore, these early campaigns focused on enacting laws that
granted married women the civil rights to own and control their separate property and to have equal guardianship rights to
their children. n21 They also advocated for laws that would grant all women the right to pursue an education, work in their
chosen occupation, and vote. n22 Finally, they advocated for the abolition of slavery, to secure liberty for all people. n23
Although their initial campaigns were not effective in enacting these legal changes, in the decades before the Civil War, their
efforts laid the foundation for the law reform strategy to become a primary tool of the women's rights movement.
After the Civil War and the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment that deemed all men and women born or
naturalized in the United States to be citizens, women's rights activists argued that the Amendment meant women were fully
enfranchised. n24 They developed a strategy called the "new departure" that asserted there was no further need for law reforms
to secure women's [*585] equality, and they claimed, specifically, that women had full suffrage rights. n25 A number of
activists across the country went to the polls and demanded they be allowed to vote. n26 Most local and state officials,
however, refused to comply. n27 When the United States Supreme Court ruled in the 1870s that the Fourteenth Amendment
did not establish or protect women's right to vote or work, women's rights activists began to divide into overlapping but
distinct factions. n28
The factions split over a number of issues including reform priorities, strategies, and sometimes over whether and how
the biological and gender differences between women and men should shape the law and the content of equality, but each
continued to use law reform campaigns as one of their primary strategies. White woman suffragists, who comprised the most
widely-studied faction of the women's rights movement, increasingly narrowed their law reform campaigns to the singular
aim of securing the vote but divided amongst themselves over issues of race and gender ideology. n29 Women temperance
activists grounded their activism in a separate spheres ideology that rested on women's status (rather than a liberal ideology
rested on women's equality) and employed law reform campaigns to advance their efforts to protect women and children
from physical and sexual abuse. n30 Women race activists [*586] advocated law reforms aimed at abolishing race
discriminations and inequities for both African American men and women. n31 Women labor activists advocated for law
reforms that would establish health and safety standards for factories, a minimum wage, maximum hour restrictions,
protection for girls and women from workplace sexual abuses, and the right to organize. n32 There were many activists who
were members of more than one faction and fought for multiple law reforms. n33 But there was only a small collection of
little-studied law activists who maintained the early movement's strategy of pursuing a wide range of law reforms with the
broad aim of securing women's equality before the law. n34
Women lawyers, with the assistance of a number of Radical Republican male lawyers, were the primary leaders of the
law activist faction. n35 They insisted that women were full citizens, privileged the law and law reforms as their main strategy,
and demanded rights that would secure women's substantive equality. n36 The law activists pursued law reforms to secure
women's citizenship rights from two positions: within the existing governmental [*587] institutions and within the emerging
nongovernmental women's associations. n37 As lawyers, insiders within the conventional institutions of power, they pressed
rights claims and developed a new form of legal reasoning to advance their arguments. n38 Being disenfranchised, the women
developed law reform agendas within nongovernmental women's associations that then pressured governmental institutions
to grant women rights. n39
The story of the law activists is unfamiliar because of the pervasive tendency to conflate the suffrage movement and the
women's rights movement and because of the dearth of information on the reform activities of nineteenth-century women
lawyers. n40 Most of the literature on nineteenth and early twentieth-century women lawyers focuses on their efforts to win
the right to be lawyers and their struggles and movements to work as practicing attorneys. n41 While scholars have long
acknowledged that many of the early women lawyers were suffragists, temperance workers, race activists, and labor activists,
only recently do works suggest that they may have played a unique role in the larger women's right movement. n42 I argue
that the activities of the nineteenth-century activist women lawyers were part of a conscious and deliberate women's law
reform movement and that their law reform campaigns laid the foundation for the twentieth-century women's rights claims
that incrementally transformed the legal status of women in American society into a position of formal, but not substantive,
equality.
[*588] This Article narrates the story of the law activists, the handful of women and men lawyers who were among
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those thinking about and experimenting with different ways of framing, securing, and enforcing women's full and equal
citizenship rights. They chose to operate institutionally and developed a complex, three-prong strategy that they employed
primarily through the courts and the legislatures. First, they led law reform campaigns that secured incremental social, civil,
and political rights for women through positive laws. Second, they infiltrated the legal profession, positioning themselves as
insiders within the legal system, enabling them to better influence the interpretation and enforcement of the positive laws
they worked to enact. Third, they became leaders in national and international women's associations helping to translate
women's social capital into a new form of nongovernmental, political power that they used to advance law reforms. The
legacy of this movement is manifest in the work of twenty-first-century women's rights activists, including Hillary Clinton,
who continue to employ these strategies in their persistent aim for true equality.
Part I begins with the development of the American women's rights movement in the early nineteenth century. It argues
that in the decades before and after the Civil War, the movement advocated for married women's property acts (MWPAs) and
woman suffrage as specific law reforms intended to grant women important incremental rights that would aid in their goal of
securing women's equality. Woman suffrage was not originally perceived as the key to women's emancipation, but as one of
many rights and privileges that women, as citizens, should possess. n43 Part I further argues that though male legislatures did
not enact MWPAs in order to grant women rights, the efforts of the women's rights activists to secure those acts were
important to the development of the women's law reform movement. Finally, this section tells the story of the emergence of a
distinct women's law reform movement and Myra Bradwell's rise as a leader within that movement. n44
Part II revisits the story of Myra Bradwell's fight to attain a law license. n45 It argues that Bradwell and her advocates
were part of a deliberate and collective effort of law activists who sought to use the law to secure women's equality [*589]
when the race and gender hierarchies that had ordered American society, from its founding, were vulnerable. The debates and
uncertainty over how to reconstruct the nation after the Civil War, and which principles would serve as foundations, created
space for the law activists to advocate their visions of liberty and equality. The simultaneous transformation within the legal
profession of the dominant understanding of the nature and philosophy of law, and the debates over which methods of
judicial interpretation should be employed, created the opportunity for the law activists to espouse new jurisprudential
arguments. I posit that these arguments were an early manifestation of what later became known as sociological
jurisprudence. n46
Part III depicts how activist women lawyers operated within nongovernmental women's associations to advance their
law reform movement. The associations employ the model of transnational advocacy networks, analyzed by Margaret E.
Keck and Kathryn Sikkink. n47 The networks illustrate how actors with shared common values and aims exchanged
information and experiences, using their collective knowledge strategically to "persuade, pressure, and gain leverage over
much more powerful organizations and governments." n48 Activist women lawyers formed both their own organizations and
committees within larger women's associations, in order to exchange information and experiences regarding the unequal
status of women. They used their collective knowledge to broaden their law reform campaigns and to mobilize greater
numbers of women to support these campaigns. They then used their amplified voices to influence the dominant legal and
political systems to advance women's rights. This section particularly examines what I posit was the women lawyers' first
major invocation of their transnational advocacy networks at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. n49 I argue that these
efforts were one of the historical precursors to the political activism of twentieth-century nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs).
Part IV illustrates how the nineteenth-century women's law reform strategies for legal equality resonated in the
strategies of twentieth and twenty-first-century law activists. It argues that although the law reform movement did make
significant strides in securing women's formal legal equality, it fell short of its goal to achieve substantive equality for
women. The strategy of law reform, which works within the existing structures of society, has not yet spawned a
restructuring of the institutions of governance. Rather, it has left in place the institutions and traditions that formed the
foundation of women's inequality. n50 [*590] It has also failed to address the acts of discrimination and circumstances of
inequality that exist beyond the reach of the law. n51 This Article concludes with an assessment that this history of the law
reform campaigns of the women's rights movement may suggest that activists will only achieve substantive equality if they
develop an alternate, radical strategy to abolish the status regime.
I. The Origins of the Women's Law Reform Movement
Before states allowed women to be licensed lawyers, women learned in the law began to organize and engage in efforts to
change the law to establish women as autonomous citizens. n52 These early women's rights activists, primarily white women
of some privilege, joined with abolitionist men who believed that the principles of liberty and equality should apply to men
and women of all races. n53 Their first efforts focused on abolishing the enforcement of the common law principle of
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coverture. n54 They compared coverture to slavery and demanded women's emancipation with full citizenship rights,
including the right of married women to own property and the right to vote for all women. n55 After the Civil War, a handful
of these activists determined to become lawyers. n56 They sought to use their position inside the profession to directly
influence the development of positive law, the way the law was interpreted, and the application of law.
A. Married Women's Property Acts
By 1860 a national law reform movement advocated the enactment of married women's property rights. The trend began in
the 1830s when the legislatures in the Arkansas Territory (1835) and the state of Mississippi (1839) each passed a law
allowing a married woman to maintain property separate from her husband. n57 Two decades later, twenty of the states
admitted to the Union (sixty-one percent) had laws establishing separate estates for married women. n58 Historians and legal
scholars diversely interpret the motivations and effects of the acts, but they generally agree that the principal motivations
were men's economic concerns - not women's rights. n59 Women's rights activists [*591] were, nonetheless, involved in
campaigns for such acts. n60 Although their efforts may not have been the primary reason for the acts' passage, their vision
and strategies were critical to the development of a women's law reform movement.
The first law reform campaigns that advocated for married women's property laws as a women's rights issue began in the
northeast in the 1830s. A loose coalition of activist women and radical men drafted bills, lobbied state legislatures, and spoke
publicly in support of the acts. n61 Assemblyman Thomas Herttell, a leader in the movement, introduced one of the first of
these bills to the New York Legislature in 1837. n62 He argued that under the guarantees of the United States Constitution, the
state of New York must restore to married women their natural right to "life, liberty, and property." n63 Although this bill
failed, over the next decade men and women activists, throughout the United States and across the Atlantic, increasingly
agitated for women's rights - and married women's property rights in particular - on the principle of equality. n64 [*592] They
also persistently re-introduced married women's property acts in New York and a number of other states and territories. n65
By the late 1840s, the loose coalition of women's rights activists began to formalize. The leaders organized local, then
national, conventions where men and women dedicated to the liberal principles of liberty and equality congregated to
advance women's rights. They set their agenda at the first of these meetings, the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention
(1848), invoking the principles and words articulated in the Declaration of Independence. n66 Specifically, they called for the
demise of coverture and the enactment of a number of positive laws that granted women rights, such as a married woman's
right to own and control her real and personal property, including her labor and her wages. n67 A handful of states, including
New York, had passed married women's statutes that granted women limited property rights, but no state provided the
equality that the women's rights activists sought. n68 By 1850, at the first National Women's Rights Convention, the activists
demanded all states enact statutory reforms of married women's property rights. n69 They then developed networks, where
experienced advocates traveled state to state to initiate or enhance local campaigns. n70
The Illinois campaign for women's rights developed out of these mixed-sex networks of activists. In 1855, in the small
town of Earlville, Illinois, a local attorney Alonzo Grover delivered an address that sparked the formation of Illinois' first
woman suffrage organization; Susan Hoxie Richardson, a cousin of Susan B. Anthony, served as president of the association
and Grover's wife, Octavia, was elected secretary. n71 Grover, whom Stanton and Anthony described as "an able champion of
the constitutional rights of women," then published articles supporting women's rights in the Earville Transcript to further the
cause and expand the network. n72 The campaign grew to include reform-minded male lawyers, like Charles Waite, and
women activists who were studied in the law, including Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite, [*593] Hannah Tracy Cutler, and
Frances Dana Gage. n73 In the years before the Civil War, these activists traveled throughout the state lecturing on women's
rights. n74
The early Illinois reformers, like other pre-Civil War women's rights activists, centered their activities on changing laws
that restricted the civil and political rights of women. n75 They initially advanced their cause by participating in what Sandra
VanBurkleo describes as "republican" speech communities. n76 The communities, comprised predominately of white,
educated women and men, and a few African American men and women, spoke out for women's rights, engaged in political
activities and civil demonstrations, and called for law reforms and positive laws to grant women rights. n77 Throughout the
1850s Frances Gage worked within these communities, traveling extensively between New York and Ohio as well as to
Illinois, Missouri, and even Louisiana. n78 In 1859, she and Cutler went to New York to assist Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Ernestine Rose, and Susan B. Anthony secure the Earnings Act, an addition to the New York MWPAs that allowed a married
woman to own and control her wages. n79 In 1860, Gage and Cutler initiated a campaign for a MWPA in Illinois. n80
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Illinois followed the pattern of New York and other states by passing MWPAs in stages, granting married women
property rights incrementally. The first Illinois MWPA became law on April 24, 1861, just over a week after the battle at Fort
Sumter began the Civil War. n81 The law granted a married woman the right to maintain as her sole and separate property,
outside of the control or interference of her husband, all property that she owned at the time of marriage or acquired during
marriage. n82 This law, however, left in tact many of the [*594] restrictions of coverture that maintained married women's
financial dependence as well as the underlying status regime of the common law. n83 The law activists, nonetheless, viewed it
as a start in their movement. n84 They immediately began to advocate for other broad and specific legislation for women's
rights, including granting women equal guardianship rights to their children. n85 But the Civil War intensified, suppressing
many of their efforts until after the war. n86
For the next four years, northern activists focused much of their energy on supporting the Union Army, unwittingly
developing critical social and political skills that enhanced the women's rights movement after the War. n87 They joined local
Sanitary Commissions, established to assist the Union Army in maintaining hygienic field hospitals and camps societies, held
fundraisers for the war effort, and formed charitable organizations that provided direct services to the troops. n88 Myra
Bradwell, an abolitionist and emerging women's rights activist, was president of the Soldiers' Aid Society, one of the
organizations that provided medical services and supplies to wounded soldiers and relief to their families. n89 Commission
work taught Bradwell and the other volunteers how to develop and operate large advocacy organizations. n90 After the war,
many women who had worked in the Sanitary Commissions and other organizations, as well as women who had worked
during the war in the factories, on farms, in business offices as clerks, or as teachers in the grammar and normal schools
believed they had fulfilled their citizenship duties and that their efforts entitled them to full civil and political citizenship
rights. n91 With the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and ultimately the Fifteenth Amendments, these women activists
demanded that the promises embedded in these laws - to endow freed men with citizenship rights - also granted white, black,
and freed women those same rights. n92
[*595] Myra Bradwell understood the potential power of the Reconstruction Amendments for women's rights. n93 The
Amendments provided new constitutional grounds to bolster activists' natural law arguments for women's equality. n94
Bradwell was well trained in the law. She began studying law in the Chicago office of her husband and brother in 1854. n95
After the War, in 1868, she founded and edited the Chicago Legal News (CLN), a weekly legal newspaper for lawyers and
judges, which she used to champion women's rights. n96 In her paper, she argued that the Constitution now secured women's
substantive equality: "Under the [Thirteenth and Fourteenth] Amendments to the constitution of the United States and the
'Civil Rights Bill,' [a woman] stands equal before the law in respect to her civil rights, with the most favored citizen of the
state male or female." n97 To secure and enforce this equality, Bradwell used the CLN to continue the law reform strategy
activists began before the War.
The CLN differed from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's The Revolution, and later from Lucy Stone's
The Women's Journal. n98 Its actual and intended audience was primarily men, especially male lawyers, judges, legislators,
and businessmen. n99 Bradwell built her readership by promptly publishing legal decisions from state and federal courts,
allowing attorneys to read these decisions well in advance of the published state reporters. n100 Alongside the court decisions,
she published stories and editorials that described the dire consequences of women's legal inequality. n101 She urged her large
readership to support the enactment and enforcement of law reforms aimed at securing women's equality, including the
MWPAs. n102
In 1869, Bradwell published a full accounting of the way the Illinois Supreme Court had interpreted and applied the
Illinois MWPA since its enactment in 1861. n103 She first discussed the way the court altered the original intent of the statute.
n104 Bradwell explained that, although the court acknowledged the act was intended to be and did effect a root change in the
rights of [*596] married women, its interpretation and application of the law as an economic measure blunted its
transformational purpose. n105 Bradwell specified that in its initial construction of the act, the Illinois Supreme Court found
that the legislature "designed to make, and did make, a radical and thorough change in the condition of a feme covert." n106
The court then discounted this design, however, by asserting that the legislature's real motivation was the volatile emerging
marketplace, where "excitement and speculation, by which fortunes are wrecked in a moment, and the innocent made to
suffer from no misconduct of their own." n107 "The object of the legislature," the court explained, "was, not to loosen the
bonds of matrimony, or create an element of constant strife between husband and wife, but to protect the latter against the
misfortunes, imprudence, or possible vice of the former, by enabling her to withhold her property from being levied on and
sold for the payment of his debts, or squandered by him against her wishes." n108 Through its decisions, the court reshaped the
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law's purpose into a perpetuation, rather than a transformation, of the status regime.
In her paper, Bradwell also highlighted the way the court used its interpretation of the act to significantly limit its scope.
She emphasized, disapprovingly, the court's finding that the act did not include a wife's earnings or any property she
bought with those earnings as her sole property. n110 The court ruled instead that these belonged to her husband. n111 It also
held that the law did not eliminate curtesy, and therefore a wife could not sell her real property without her husband's
consent. n112 Further, the court found that the act only allowed a married woman to enter into contracts regarding her separate
property. n113 But it did not remove other common law liabilities that prohibited her from entering into other contracts,
engaging in trade, or acting as a surety for her husband. n114 Finally, emphasizing its commitment to coverture, the court ruled
that because the husband owned his wife's earnings and had the limited right of curtesy, he was still liable for his wife's debts.
n109
n115
Following the law activists in New York and elsewhere, Bradwell engaged in a vigorous campaign for a married
woman's earnings law and a law that granted women equal guardianship rights to their children in Illinois. n116 In the CLN,
she explained the proposed statutes and published arguments in favor of [*597] the reforms to win the support of the male
legal community and as an indirect appeal to the legislature. n117 She dramatically described the negative effect the law had
on laboring women who were married to financially irresponsible husbands:
since the Supreme Court decided that the act of 1861 did not extend to the earnings of a married woman, and that they
belonged to the husband, and might be taken to pay his debts[,] rich shoddy creditors of the husband have ever since been
taking to pay his debts the money earned by the honest toil of the wife, for the purpose of supporting her ragged, starving
children, which a drunken or unfortunate husband failed to provide for, and the law still remains the same. n118
Bradwell also appealed to men's economic interests, publishing articles that criticized the court's findings that the 1861 act
did not relieve a husband from the common law liability for his wife's debts and exempted a wife's property from liability for
her own debts as well as her husband's. n119
The state legislature responded in 1869 with a second MWPA. n120 As in other states, the new law granted married
women limited additional property rights. n121 It deemed a married woman's earnings her sole and separate property and
allowed a married woman to sue in her own name. n122 But, it did not grant her equal guardianship rights to their children, nor
address the concerns of those who believed that husbands and wives would use the law to evade creditors, as it failed to
remove the common law prohibition against suing a married woman. n123 Bradwell agreed with the law's opponents that the
statutory amendments were inadequate, but explained her objection was not because the law encouraged swindling, but
because it failed to make women's property rights and obligations equal to men's under the law. n124 "[A married woman is a]
citizen of our State and of the United States ... as much a citizen as a married man," Bradwell asserted. n125 Women should
have the full benefits and obligations of that status. n126 Another five years passed before the 1874 Illinois legislature passed a
third MWPA. n127 This act moved married women's property rights closer to formal equality, but still failed to displace the
underlying status regime. n128
Law activists continued their fight for married women's property rights throughout the nineteenth century as they
broadened their agenda. n129 They linked their MWPA campaigns with campaigns for other civil and political [*598] rights,
including woman suffrage. n130 As women learned in the law, they continued to apply their strategy of advocating law
reforms to secure women's full emancipation and equality. n131 Their campaigns were a core part of the early women's rights
movement, but their focus on rights claims and law reform made them exceptional in the decades after the Civil War. It
allowed them to maintain relationships with most women's rights associations despite divisions that arose between and
among those groups, most dramatically within the woman suffrage movement. n132
B. Woman Suffrage
The law activists emerged as a distinct faction within the women's rights movement when the leaders of the movement
divided over the issue of suffrage. Part of the story is familiar. Woman suffrage was one of the central law reforms women's
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rights activists demanded during the movement's formalizing conventions in the 1840s and 1850s. n133 After the Civil
War, women's rights activists who had fought for the abolition of slavery, as well as women's emancipation, believed the
government would enfranchise all African Americans and all women. n134 When Congress passed constitutional amendments
that granted suffrage to black men alone, an independent woman suffrage movement emerged. n135 Suffragists then divided
among themselves over whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment as they fought for woman suffrage, or whether to
denounce it because women were not included. n136
The less familiar part of the story is the emergence of a connected, yet distinct, law reform movement. To be clear, the
leaders of the woman suffrage movement continued to support a broad range of law reform campaigns to advance women's
rights in the second half of the nineteenth century, but they subordinated those efforts to securing the vote. n137 Further, they
allowed their position on the Fifteenth Amendment and their suffrage strategies to divide themselves from each other. n138
Women law activists did not. They maintained an extensive law reform agenda that included but did not privilege suffrage,
and they maintained relationships with both of the main, oppositional suffrage camps. n139 Myra Bradwell served as a leader
of this law activist faction. n140
Law activists articulated their law reform agenda at a suffrage convention in Illinois in 1869. n141 After the Civil War,
women suffragists in Illinois, as in other states, proposed a woman suffrage provision as part of the state's new [*599]
constitution. n142 Illinois was one of many states spurred by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) and the
Fourteenth Amendment (1868) to hold constitutional conventions to redefine the roles of individuals, the law, and the state in
light of these new amendments. n143 In preparation of the Illinois convention, the Woman's Association (later Chicago
Sorosis), one of the city's first woman's clubs, determined to hold a suffrage convention to generate support for a woman
suffrage provision in the new state constitution. n144 During the planning stages, however, significant debates over political
strategy caused some of the members to leave the club and form a second woman's suffrage association. n145 The conflicts
were similar to the rift that occurred between the leaders of the national woman's suffrage movement over the Fifteenth
Amendment during the same period, n146 but the outcome was distinguishable.
The law activists in Illinois, and Bradwell principal among them, refused to allow the debate over women suffragists'
support of the Fifteenth Amendment to determine their associations or their strategies. n147 Like all woman suffragists, they
were frustrated by the Republican Party's failure to include women in the suffrage provision. n148 Yet, they continued to
support Lucy Stone, the subsequent leader of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), and other national
leaders who, nonetheless, endorsed the amendment that gave African American men alone the vote. n149 They also continued
to support Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who denounced the Fifteenth Amendment, since women were not
included, and subsequently established the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). n150 The Illinois law activists
carved out a middle ground.
To maintain this middle ground, they focused on the issue with which the oppositional factions agreed, that women
secure the right to vote. n151 Bradwell joined with a number of other law activists and woman suffragists who formed their
own association, the Illinois Women's Suffrage Association (IWSA), at a [*600] separate convention in Chicago in February
1869. n152 During its first two years the IWSA resolved to remain impartial in the fight between the national leaders and
focused its efforts on advancing a law reform agenda - the IWSA's first act was to create a commission dedicated to
advocating changes in the laws affecting the social and legal status of women. n153 One of its leaders, Judge Charles Waite
(who was a member of the state's first women's rights association in 1855) drafted a resolution calling for woman suffrage to
be included in the new state constitution. n154 Judge Waite also demanded an end to any legal barrier that limited women's full
participation in "social, civil and political life." n155 Myra Bradwell, who was elected corresponding secretary, detailed the
organization's agenda in the CLN. n156
The law activists worked for a number of critical rights they believed were necessary for women to achieve liberty and
equality. n157 As they were advocating for suffrage laws, either as a state statute, a state constitutional provision, or a federal
constitutional amendment, they simultaneously sought additional law reforms to further their cause. n158 But because law
reform was their primary strategy, they recognized that advocating from outside the legal system was not enough. n159 They
determined to change their relationship with the legal system to become accepted members inside the legal profession. n160
Myra Bradwell was among the first of this small group to seek official entry into the male legal realm.
II. The Development of the Women's Law Reform Movement: Women Lawyers and Their Arguments for a New
Jurisprudence
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The law activists never formalized their law reform movement by naming it or establishing a separate, specific organization.
The members included those committed to the strategy of securing women's rights through a broad range of law reforms and
the networks they developed. n161 The movement took [*601] shape as a handful of law activists determined to become
licensed lawyers. They saw the period of reconstruction, after the Civil War, as their opportunity to infiltrate the legal
profession. n162 They developed new legal arguments to both persuade courts and legislatures to grant them a law license and
to ensure that their law reforms were enacted and enforced. n163
In the summer of 1869, working in mixed-sex, loosely formed networks, two women (both white) applied for a state
license to practice law, and five women (four white and one African American) enrolled in the few law departments in the
country that would admit women. n164 Their motivation for entering the legal profession was threefold: (1) they sought to
establish that women had the right to work in any profession or occupation; (2) they wanted to practice law as a career; and
(3) they intended to use their positions as lawyers - official members inside the legal system - to advance and enforce the
social, civil, and political rights of women. n165 Their efforts were not individual, but rather part of a collective effort. n166
Myra Bradwell, who was the second American woman to apply for a law license (and the only one of this group whose
application was denied), n167 became the leader of this collective. n168 She used her licensure case and her legal newspaper, the
CLN, to foster the development of trans-state networks that became the core of the women's law reform movement over the
next several decades. n169
The legal profession to which these women sought entry was in the midst of transformation. The new, and increasingly
dominant, view was that law was a science and should be interpreted and administered only by professional [*602] experts.
n170 Elite lawyers sought to discount the philosophy promoted in the early nineteenth century by President Andrew Jackson
that the learned professions did not require any special qualifications and should be open to ordinary men. n171 Law schools,
in large part due to the work of Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School, were replacing
apprenticeships as the preferred method of studying law. n172 These developments, coupled with pressure from elite lawyers
to exclude the growing numbers of non-elites seeking entrance to the profession (immigrant and African American men, and
all women) inspired state legislatures to revive law licensing and certification requirements for admission. n173
Against the intentions of the elite, these transformations of the legal system provided women and minority men new
opportunities to demand their equality before the law and to become lawyers. n174 The proliferation of law schools created a
number of institutions that admitted women and minority men. n175 The new statutes setting requirements for a law license
standardized admissions and lessened the opportunities for nepotism and overt discrimination. n176 Further, the Fourteenth
Amendment, which deemed as citizens all men and women born in the United States and those naturalized, provided new
legal arguments for women's rights activists to employ in their movement. n177 Included in these arguments were demands
that would be the basis for a legal philosophy known later as sociological jurisprudence. n178
Legal thought also was in transition in the decades after the war. Elite lawyers and Justices employed an ideology that
William Wiecek labels "legal classicism." n179 Legal classicists believed the legal order was an "autonomous, [*603]
determinate, natural, neutral, necessary, objective, and apolitical structure of principles and norms." n180 Most legal and
historical scholars credit Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as one of the first intellectuals to question the notion that judicial
decisions were based on such detached criteria. n181 Populists, and then the Progressives, were the first to politically attack
classicism. n182
The core of the movement to replace classicism is most often tied to Roscoe Pound, a law professor and later Dean of
Harvard Law School. n183 Pound coined the term "sociological ... jurisprudence" in the first decade of the twentieth century in
his call for "pragmatism as a philosophy of law." n184 Pound asserted that the law ought to address current social needs and
secure social justice. n185 But Pound was not the first to articulate these arguments. Women's rights activists made these
demands in the years after the Civil War, when a handful of Radical Republicans and women law activists sought to remove
the gender barriers to the legal profession as part of the women's rights movement. n186
A. Myra Bradwell's Case and the Gendered Origins of Sociological Jurisprudence
The movement to open the legal profession to women began in Iowa. A small group of Radical Republican judges and
lawyers who had been attempting to use the law and legal system to secure liberty and equality for African Americans
organized the effort. n187 Judge Francis Springer, a leader in this movement, encouraged Arabella Babb Mansfield, a married
white woman, to seek admission to practice law in the state. n188 Mansfield, who had been studying law for two years in her
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brother's law office while a professor at Iowa Wesleyan, agreed. n189 On June 15, 1869, she applied to the Iowa District
Court for her law license. n190 As the presiding judge, Springer appointed two male lawyers who supported women's rights to
examine her. n191 Each passed Mansfield with high honors, noting their authority to admit Mansfield rested on her exceptional
ability and "the demands and necessities of the present time and [*604] occasion." n192 The committee concluded that
Mansfield's performance in her examination "has given the very best rebuke possible to the imputation that ladies can not
qualify for the practice of law." n193
The examiners' remarks helped lay the foundation for a new ideology of judicial interpretation that would follow, one
that required judges to interpret and apply statutes in light of "the needs and interests and opinions of society of to-day [sic]."
n194 The judges needed to employ an ideology that allowed them to circumvent a literal interpretation of the law. The Iowa
statute regulating the admission of attorneys restricted the profession to "white male persons." n195 Judge Springer interpreted
the word "male" in the statute to include women, and admitted Mansfield to the bar. n196 He reasoned, "the affirmative
declaration that male persons may be admitted is not implied denial to the right of females." n197 An article in the local
newspaper evidenced popular support for Springer's decision, exclaiming Mansfield to be a "lady of strong mind ... . That she
has the brains and the necessary ability to make a good record for herself" no one will dispute. n198 Women's rights activists
also celebrated and spread the word of Mansfield's admission, including publishing an article about the event in The
Revolution. n199
Six weeks later, Myra Bradwell applied for her Illinois law license with a goal to advance the movement. n200 Bradwell
had received her certificate of examination and submitted it and her certificate of study to the court as required by statute. n201
She additionally included a brief, as she was the first woman to apply for a law license in the state. n202 The statute governing
law licenses in Illinois used the male pronoun in its recitation of requirements. n203 In her brief, Bradwell acknowledged this
circumstance but asked the court to interpret the statute regarding admission to the bar in light of subsequent laws and grant
her application. n204
Bradwell's brief followed the reasoning Judge Springer applied in Mansfield's case. She argued that the law did not
overtly include a requirement that the applicant be male. n205 Further, she explained that chapter 90 of the Illinois Revised
Statutes specified, "When any party or person is described or referred to by words importing the masculine gender, females
as well as males shall be deemed to be included." n206 Bradwell noted that in all fifty-three sections of the Illinois Chancery
Code, the words "woman," "female," or any feminine pronouns [*605] never appeared, although masculine pronouns were
used throughout. n207 If the court determined the use of the male pronoun in the section regarding the practice of law excluded
women, Bradwell argued, it would follow that none of the sections of the chancery code applied to women. n208 But because
"no respectable attorney would claim because defendants in chancery are represented in law by masculine pronouns, that a
woman could not be made a defendant in chancery," Bradwell insisted that she was entitled to her law license. n209
When the Illinois court used the doctrine of coverture to support its denial of her application, Bradwell crystallized the
new method of legal reasoning. She demanded that the court reject the outdated principles and interpret the statute in light of
the current needs, interests, and opinions of society. n210 She gave the Illinois Supreme Court a chance to reconsider its
decision, as she sought to establish legal grounds to take her case beyond the state court should it rule against her; she
submitted an additional brief asserting that though she was indeed married, "although she believes that fact does not appear in
the record," being married did not disqualify her from admission to the bar. n211 Bradwell attempted to persuade the judges
that the common law notions of coverture no longer applied. n212 Women were neither child-like nor burdened by the
limitation of coverture principles; rather, she pronounced that women stood on a ground of equality with men. n213
This alternative method of legal interpretation required judges to consider the current social and economic
circumstances and conditions when applying the law. n214 Bradwell argued that in her case, the justices must consider the new
laws that granted married women property rights, as well as the social advances women had made in public life. n215
The doors of many of our universities and law schools are now open to women upon an equality with men. The Government
of the United States has employed women in many of its departments, and appointed many, both single and married, to
office. Almost every large city in the Union has its regularly admitted female physicians ... The bar itself is not without its
women lawyers, both single and married. n216
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Bradwell hoped the justices would consider these examples as precedent-setting changes in the social and legal position of
women, and thus apply the law to her case in line with this changed reality.
Bradwell ended her brief with her boldest invocation of this alternative mode of judicial interpretation. She cited a
decision by a prominent English jurist, Lord Mansfield, who found in a separate case that, despite the dictates of common
law, there were certain circumstances where a married woman could [*606] contract and be sued. n217 Although Lord
Mansfield was considered an instrumentalist and was championing a free market, not women's rights, she argued that his
decision rested on the realization that because social conditions had changed, the law, too, must change. n218 He had to apply
the law in light of the new reality. According to Bradwell, the justice believed that because "the reason of the law [ceased] the
law itself must cease; and that, as the usages of society alter, the law must adapt itself to the various situations of mankind."
n219
Bradwell did not develop these arguments in isolation, but as part of a mixed-sex network of law activists. Bradwell
participated in and fostered the growth of this network by reporting on women's rights endeavors, visiting with other activists,
and participating in women's rights organizing efforts. n220 She celebrated Arabella Mansfield's admission to practice law in
Iowa in the CLN and used Mansfield's case as evidence in the briefs she submitted in her own case. n221 Prior to filing her
case, she met with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on at least three occasions in the first half of 1869. n222
Locally, Bradwell had the support and assistance of her husband, James Bradwell (a lawyer and Radical Republican), and
long-time women's rights activists, Catharine and Charles Waite. n223
Even as Bradwell was responding to the Illinois Supreme Courts' letter of denial, other activists within the network were
developing a new strategy to secure women's rights based on the Fourteenth Amendment. Ellen Carol DuBois credits Frances
and Virginia Minor with the origins of the New Departure argument, which included the notion that the right to vote was one
of the privileges and immunities of United States citizens protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. n224 Women activists
quickly seized on the New Departure argument and put it into practice by demanding the right to vote. n225 The majority of
this activity occurred in 1868 and 1869. n226 Bradwell adapted the argument for use in her own case. She filed yet another
brief on January 2, 1870, that rested [*607] women's right to practice law on the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil
Rights Act. n227
Bradwell's third and final brief to the Illinois Supreme Court included two constitutional arguments in support of her
application, both of which incorporated the New Departure. n228 These arguments challenged the court's original use of
coverture as grounds for denying her application and established grounds for an appeal to the United States Supreme Court,
should the Illinois court once again deny her application. n229 The first claim was that the denial of her application based on
her status as a married woman violated her United States citizenship rights set forth in the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. n230 Bradwell quoted the portion of the act that guaranteed all United States
citizens the "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property," and asserted that this
granted her "the right to exercise and follow the profession of an attorney-at law upon the same terms, conditions and
restrictions as are applied to and imposed upon every other citizen of the State of Illinois, and none other." n231 Bradwell
reasoned that because she had complied with all of the state requirements for admission to the bar, "it is contrary to the true ...
meaning of said amendment and said 'Civil Rights Bill,' for your petitioner to be refused a license to practice law, upon the
sole ground of her 'married condition.'" n232
Bradwell based her second claim on the Fourth Article of the United States Constitution, not the Fourteenth
Amendment, but adapted the New Departure argument to this constitutional provision as well; she asserted that Illinois had
violated the privileges and immunities of her state citizenship under the Fourth Article. n233 Because she had formerly been a
citizen of Vermont, by virtue of being born there, Bradwell claimed that when she moved to Illinois, she was guaranteed the
full privileges and immunities that were granted to every other citizen of that state. n234 Bradwell argued that one of these
protected privileges was "the right to follow any professional pursuit under the laws ... [including] a right to receive a license
to practice law upon the same terms and conditions as the most favored citizen of the State of Illinois." n235 Bradwell claimed
that even as a married woman, she was a full citizen, and therefore deserved equal treatment under the law. n236
The Illinois Supreme Court employed classical legal reasoning in its denial of Bradwell's appeal, and drew on a mixture
of natural law, common law (and its status regime), and positive law to support its decision. n237 In September [*608] of
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1869, Chief Justice Charles B. Lawrence issued the opinion for the court ruling definitively that married or not, no
woman could be admitted to the Illinois bar. n238 He explained that the court could "not admit any persons or class of persons
[to the practice of law] who are not intended by the legislature to be admitted, even though their exclusion is not expressly
required by the statute." n239 The court first asserted that the legislature had established the bar's admission requirements with
the dominant notions of gender that limited women's citizenship rights in mind and purposefully excluded them from
participating in public office. n240 The court then explained that the positive law was based on the natural legal principle that
women were not equal with men: "That God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to
men to make, apply and execute the laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth" when the legislature made the law
governing the bar admission. n241 The court was keenly aware of the growing legal demands of the women's rights movement
and their revolutionary potential. n242 It denounced the movement and the social upheaval that surely would follow:
This step [granting Bradwell a law license], if taken by us, would mean that in the opinion of this tribunal, every civil office
in this State may be filled by women - that it is in harmony with the spirit of the Constitution and laws that women should be
made governors, judges and sheriffs. This we are not yet prepared to hold. n243
Bradwell had always understood and intended that the issues in her case extended far beyond the right to practice law. Hence,
she interpreted the court's decision as a denial of women's citizenship. "What the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
States was in the Dred Scott case was to the rights of negroes as citizens of the United States, this decision[,]" charged
Bradwell, "is to the political rights of women in Illinois - annihilation." n244 Through her case and the other legal reforms
pressed by the developing women's law reform movement, Bradwell sought to establish women as autonomous individuals
with full citizenship rights, privileges, and obligations. Bradwell decided to appeal the court's decision, thus continuing her
attempt to secure women's civil right to work in their chosen field through the courts. But the court's dicta outlined an
additional strategy with which women law reform activists were already experienced. n245 The court's suggestion that "if the
legislature shall choose to remove the existing barriers and authorize us to issue licenses equally to men and women we shall
cheerfully obey," inspired Bradwell and other activists to also attempt to change the law. n246
Bradwell first concentrated on her appeal, attempting to frame it in the broadest possible terms, casting the case as a
women's rights issue. She sought a decision from the United States Supreme Court that would establish definitively [*609]
that the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act confirmed woman's status as full citizens entitled to due process
protections and equal rights, opening the way for married and single women in every state to become licensed attorneys and
much more. n247 She hired United States Senator Matthew Carpenter to argue her case. n248 An eight-year veteran of the
Supreme Court bar, Carpenter was a leading expert on constitutional issues, one of the most effective advocates of his day,
and favored woman's suffrage. n249
Carpenter based the appeal on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and thereby only
partially complied with Bradwell's intentions. He cast the issue as "a question not of taste, propriety or politeness, but of civil
right," and directly asserted that women were citizens. n250 "The [Fourteenth] Amendment declares," Carpenter wrote, "'all
persons born and naturalized in the United States, etc., are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside.'"
n251 "Of course," he explained, "women, as well as men, are included in this provision, and recognized as citizens." n252
Carpenter did not, however, present Bradwell's argument that the court's denial of her law license violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and he distinguished suffrage from the right to work. n253 Carpenter stayed
clear of arguments based on gender equality because of the Justices' outspoken opposition to woman suffrage. n254 Carpenter
argued that the right to work in an occupation was a right of citizenship that the Fourteenth Amendment protected from state
interference, but qualified that allowing women the civil right to practice law would not be grounds to give women the
political right to vote. n255
There is no record regarding Bradwell's reaction to Carpenter's strategy. Bradwell reprinted Carpenter's argument in its
entirety in the CLN and refrained from commenting on his omission of a Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection claim or
his distinction between the right to work and the right to vote. n256 Although Bradwell clearly supported woman suffrage, her
silence on his strategy may reveal one of the distinctions between an activist woman lawyer working within the system and
the radical suffragists that used civil disobedience to challenge the system. Susan B. Anthony's widely studied use of the New
Departure dramatically illustrates the difference. n257 After Anthony was arrested for attempting to vote, she defended herself
by denouncing the male [*610] legal system; "laws [are] made by men, under a government of men, interpreted by men and
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for the benefit of men[,]" Anthony told the court. n258 "The only chance women have for justice in this country is to
violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do[.]" n259 As a lawyer, Bradwell employed a more conservative
rights-claim strategy that required adherence to the court and a method of incremental change.
When the Supreme Court ruled against Bradwell, it also based its reasoning on the Privileges and Immunities Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. n260 Following Carpenter's argument, the Court framed the issue as whether a state can set
regulations that limit a citizen's right to work. n261 It considered Bradwell's case along with several cases from New Orleans
involving the right of the state to control the slaughterhouse industry in that city. n262 Specifically, the Slaughterhouse cases
asked the Supreme Court to decide if a state regulation that resulted in an infringement on the right of one or more citizens to
pursue their occupation was a violation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. n263 These
two cases were the first opportunity for the court to interpret and apply the new Fourteenth Amendment.
At the heart of both cases was how to reconcile an individual's civil right to work with a state's right to regulate
occupations within its borders. n264 At issue in the Slaughterhouse cases was a new law that prohibited all slaughtering in
New Orleans except at one regulated facility. n265 Numerous slaughterhouses were closed as a result of this law, negatively
affecting the livelihood of countless butchers. n266 Though these workers were exclusively men, like Bradwell, they argued
that the state law was an infringement on their constitutionally protected right to work. n267 In both the Bradwell and the
Slaughterhouse cases, the Court considered the larger implications of its decisions: a favorable ruling would make laboring
men and women's right to work in their chosen field superior to a state's right to control who works in what occupation or
profession within its borders.
[*611] Matthew Carpenter, who served as Bradwell's counsel and also represented the Slaughter-House Company in the
Louisiana cases, argued that the Fourteenth Amendment did protect an individual's right to work, but distinguished factually
between the two cases. n268 Carpenter argued in Bradwell's case that the right to work in one's chosen occupation was a
privilege protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. n269 In the Slaughterhouse cases, however, Carpenter argued that the
Louisiana law limiting the right to work was an acceptable use of the state's police power. n270 The Supreme Court considered
these two cases together and announced the Louisiana case first. n271 Upholding the Louisiana law, it based its decision on its
interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause, saying that the state laws in question, which effectively regulated a
citizen's right to pursue an occupation, did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment because they were a legitimate use of the
state's power. n272 This ruling set up its decision in the Bradwell case, announced one day later, upholding the denial of
Bradwell's application to practice law. n273
The majority decision in Bradwell's case, supported by five of the nine Justices, based its ruling on constitutional
grounds and abstained from any comment of the issue of women's rights. n274 Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, the
Court ruled that the right to practice law was not a right protected under its Privileges and Immunities Clause. n275 It left the
regulation of licensing attorneys to each state. n276 The Court chose not to comment on the lower court's rationale that was
based on a patriarchal interpretation of natural law. n277 The majority also avoided a ruling on the state's relationship to
women, though its decision effectively upheld limitations imposed by state governments on women's rights, including
women's right to work in their chosen occupation and suffrage.
Justice Bradley, joined by two other Justices (all three of whom dissented in the Slaughterhouse cases), concurred in the
decision but rejected the majority reasoning in an attempt to use the case to explicitly define the relationship between women
and the state. n278 Bradley argued, consistent with his position in the Slaughterhouse cases, that the Fourteenth Amendment
created a new general rule making positive the natural right of a male citizen to pursue his [*612] chosen occupation. n279
Therefore, Bradley implied, as he had asserted in the Slaughterhouse cases, a state could not interfere with that right without
due process of law. n280 Through Bradwell's case, Bradley sought to establish that women were exempt from this rule. Justice
Bradley rested his decision on women's gendered status, invoking the principles of both natural law and the common law that
separated men and women into different spheres. n281 Women had no right to practice law, he reasoned, as the law fell
completely within man's sphere. n282
The Bradwell majority's silence on issues of natural law and common law, and the fact that its opinion allowed for
individual state legislatures to pass laws that would give women the right to practice law, represented the early stages of a
transition in the dominant gender ideology. n283 Beyond the Court, there was some evidence that a growing number of men in
the legal community also rejected Bradley's invocation of women's limitations based on their gender status and embraced
instead a new role for women that conformed to the principles of American liberalism. n284 When the majority opinion by
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Justice Miller was read in open court, those in attendance received the decision somberly and silently. n285 In contrast,
when Justice Bradley's concurring opinion was read, the lawyers in the courtroom openly expressed their amusement. n286
The discourse opposing the separate sphere ideology had become sufficiently pervasive that Bradley's attempt to require all
women to be only wife and mother elicited ridicule. n287 Over the next two decades, aspiring women lawyers continued in a
joint effort with activist men to advance women's rights claims, opening the legal profession to women one state at a time.
B. Developing Networks to Advance Women's Law Reforms
In the second half of the nineteenth century, many of the women's rights activists who sought a law license created networks
with activist male lawyers to advance their rights claims and continued to employ the ideology of sociological jurisprudence
to support their cause. n288 Their strategy, to become official actors within the legal system, necessitated that they work with
men, n289 but most of the coalitions were built on mutual respect and the pursuit of a common [*613] goal. The networks
developed locally at first, growing into a national movement by the late nineteenth century. n290 Myra Bradwell, who was a
leader in both her local network and the national effort, fostered the development of the movement through the CLN. She
championed women's efforts to become lawyers and to secure other civil and political rights, as she praised their male
advocates and documented their legal arguments that asked judges and legislatures to change and interpret the law in light of
the new social position of women.
The network of law activists developed in Illinois while the United States Supreme Court was deliberating Bradwell's
appeal. n291 The network included Myra Bradwell and her husband, James Bradwell, Catharine Waite and her husband,
Charles Waite, Ada Kepley and her husband, Henry Kepley, William Lathrop, and Alta Hulett. n292 All of the men were
licensed lawyers and all of the women were studied in the law. n293 Ada Kepley was the only woman of the group that had
attended law school. n294 Kepley graduated from the original University of Chicago law department on June 30, 1870, n295 the
first woman in the country to earn a Bachelor of Laws degree. n296 After she passed the state bar exam, despite the backing of
the dean and many of the faculty, State's Attorney Charles H. Reed refused Kepley's application for her law license. n297 Reed
cited the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in the Bradwell case as the [*614] reason for his denial. n298 Kepley understood
Reed's decision as a limitation on women's rights, explaining, "Women might be cooks, wash women, floor scrubbers and do
any sort of menial labor at that time, but they were barred from the so called learned professions." n299
These activists began exploring alternative avenues, apart from the Illinois Supreme Court, to secure a woman's right to
pursue her occupation of choice. Bradwell used the CLN to raise the possibility of adding a provision in the new state
constitution. n300 Delegates at the constitutional convention, who were on the verge of adopting a new state constitution, had
recently voted against a proposal to include a provision that would have specifically excluded women from practicing law.
n301 Though Bradwell argued that their decision represented the true will of the people, and reported that the majority had
come to support the advancement of women's rights and their admittance into the profession, the delegates rejected her
proposed provision establishing women's right to practice law. n302 Ada Kepley sought out a local judge in her hometown of
Effingham, Illinois, to establish her right to pursue a legal career. n303 Judge Decius admitted Kepley to practice law in his
court, defying the state supreme court, by employing the developing sociological jurisprudence reasoning. n304 He asserted
that "the motion [to admit Kepley] was proper and in accord with the spirit of the age." n305 He explained, "if it was the
unanimous sense of the Bar, [I] do not feel at liberty to deny the motion." n306 However, because state law made it a crime for
anyone to practice law in the state without a license, Kepley refrained from practicing. n307
The network's most organized and concerted effort to secure women's right to work in their chosen field was a law
reform campaign. They drew on their earlier work to secure the married women's property acts and the growing support for
women's right to practice law from judges, practitioners, and journalists throughout the country. Rather than seek a limited
measure that would allow a select group of women entrance to the legal profession, these activists determined to use
language that would support the right of all women to work, expanding their opportunities to engage in any field. n308 They
considered the bill as another right included in the larger women's law reform effort. The law they drafted in the fall of 1871,
"AN ACT to secure to all persons freedom in the selection of an occupation, profession, or employment," proposed, "[that]
[*615] no person shall be precluded or debarred from any occupation, profession or employment ... on account of sex." n309
The network's core activists next engaged in a strenuous campaign to ensure the bill's passage. Myra Bradwell used the
CLN to support the campaign to enact the proposed legislation. n310 Alta Hulett traveled throughout the state delivering a
lecture in support of the measure entitled "Justice versus the Supreme Court" that criticized the Illinois Supreme Court for its
decision barring women from the practice of law, demanded the equality of the sexes, called for an end to discrimination
based on sex, and argued that Illinois law should support women's right to work. n311 "Women have a right to enter upon any
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honorable calling or profession that she could fit herself for," Hulett explained, positing, "Man had no right by unjust
laws or by sentimental pretences, to circumscribe the field of labor or usefulness of woman." n312 The crowds, hesitant at first,
cheered Hulett by the end of her address. n313 She also argued her case to the joint judiciary committee of the House and
Senate. n314
Members of the Illinois Legislature were persuaded to grant women the right to practice law and the right to work in
most fields, but they reserved certain exceptions, signaling their continued rejection of the larger issue of women's full
equality with men. Women could not use the law to secure entrance to the military, engage in the burgeoning and dangerous
business of road construction, or secure the right to serve on juries. n315 The insistence on women's exclusion from the
military was particularly strong in the years following the Civil War, where women had contributed to military efforts in a
myriad of ways, including dressing as men and serving on the front lines. n316 Although both the Union and the Confederate
Armies used women who volunteered their services for the war effort, they refused to grant women any official position or
pay and dismissed those who fought when they discovered their sex. n317 None of the women promoting this legislation
commented publicly on this exclusionary clause or on women's exclusion from working on road construction.
[*616] Many and varied women's rights activists did campaign for women's right to serve on juries, including these
legal women. n318 But they supported the bill with the exceptions, understanding that they would have to secure women's civil
and political rights incrementally. They also believed that if the bill passed, it would provide a way for women to advocate
for law reforms from inside the legal system. n319 They argued that women's presence in the courtroom, both as lawyers and
jurors, was essential to influence the way women's rights were interpreted and to ensure that women's rights were enforced.
n320 Though the Illinois Legislature did not pass a law allowing women to serve on juries until 1939; in 1872, it was willing to
allow women to enter the legal profession. n321
The resistance to the advancement of women's rights persisted even as the bill was enacted into law. It took several
votes and much debate before the legislature passed the bill by the required majority. n322 Governor Palmer, who had declined
Myra Bradwell's application for appointment at Notary Public just over two years earlier on the grounds of coverture, signed
the bill into law. n323 The Illinois Supreme Court responded by simultaneously increasing the standards for securing a law
license. The court adopted an order requiring all candidates for the bar complete two years of legal studies, doubling the
previous one-year requirement. n324
The law activists had diverse individual responses to the new laws, but as a movement, they capitalized on the reform.
Bradwell refused to reapply for admission on principle. n325 She believed the Illinois Supreme Court had erred in its decision
and that it should admit her to the practice based on her original application. n326 Ada Kepley delayed reapplying for her
license until 1881. n327 Although she did assist her husband in his law practice, Kepley's primary focus for almost a decade
was woman suffrage and temperance reform. n328 Hulett moved to Chicago, studied law for an additional year, and in 1873,
re-applied for her law license. n329 She was required to take a second bar examination, which she passed, receiving the highest
score of all twenty-eight applicants. n330 [*617] On June 4, 1873, two days after her nineteenth birthday, Alta Hulett became
the first licensed woman lawyer in Illinois. n331
Illinois was the first state to pass such an enabling statute, but it was not the only place where women were seeking to
become lawyers and gain their full citizenship rights. n332 Bradwell used the CLN to create a network among rights activists
across the country to gain support for those white women and black women and men who were aspiring to be lawyers,
officeholders, jurors, and voters. n333 She also used her paper to criticize courts that continued to limit their rights. In 1870 for
example, Bradwell reported on a judicial ruling that excluded black men from serving on a jury in Alton, Illinois. n334 She
argued that the exclusion violated the new Amendments and federal laws. n335 The following year, she celebrated the ruling of
the Wyoming (Territory) Supreme Court when it ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment established that "women are
persons ... entitled to all the privileges of citizenship," including the right to vote and to sit on juries. n336 Bradwell especially
reported on the efforts of women and minority men to secure a law license. n337
The United States Supreme Court's decision in Bradwell's case resulted in women and African American men fighting to
enter the legal profession state by state. n338 Bradwell reported these efforts in the CLN to inform activists across the country
of events in other states and to facilitate the development of a national movement. She publicized cases where courts
admitted the applicant without objection, including Charlotte Ray's 1872 admission in the District of Columbia, the first
African American woman to secure a law license in the country. n339 In cases where a court denied admission, Bradwell
published the arguments made by the applicants and their supporters. n340 The cases of Lavinia Goodell, who applied for a
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license to practice law before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1875, and Belva Lockwood, who applied to practice
before the United States Supreme Court in 1876, are two dramatic examples of women [*618] who benefited from and
enhanced the developing women's law reform network. n341
Both cases illustrate how the law reform network and the sociological jurisprudence arguments were developing.
Goodell wrote her own briefs employing arguments that included a mix of classical legal reasoning and the new sociological
jurisprudence reasoning. n342 She argued, like Bradwell, that because the new Wisconsin licensing regulations were passed in
1867 and 1870, "when progressive ideas concerning the enlargement of the sphere of women's industries were more widely
known and adopted," the legislature intended that women would be eligible for admission. n343 She asserted that it "may
reasonably be presumed to have been within the minds of the legislators" that women could be admitted. n344 Goodell also
specifically invoked Bradwell's case and the Illinois Supreme Court's rationale denying Bradwell's license. n345 Distinguishing
herself as an unmarried woman, Goodell claimed that married or not, the Wisconsin legislature had overturned the common
law prohibitions against women's right to own property, enter into contracts, and control her own wages, all prohibitions that
the Illinois court used to justify deny Bradwell's admission. n346
Goodell, like the other rights claims activists, advocated for the transition of gender norms in a period of social
ambivalence over the nature and role of women. n347 She addressed the issue directly in her brief, drawing on the two
dominant arguments used by women's rights activists: that women were equal in intelligence and ability to men, and that her
natural gender attributes, nurture and compassion, would enhance her ability to practice law. n348 Goodell argued that
"[Woman's] peculiar delicacy, refinement, and conscientiousness" were not barriers to women's participation in the
profession, but rather, were "desirable [and] necessary in promoting the 'proper administration of justice in our courts.'" n349
Simultaneously she argued that, because women comprised half of the population, the only way to ensure them justice was to
ensure that they be represented by members of their own class. n350
The two cases embodied the battle between those justices and legislators who were trying to maintain a social order
based on status, and its attendant separate gendered spheres, and those law reform activists that advocated a new social order
based on their conception of American liberalism, and its gender- [*619] neutral construction of citizenship rights. Bradwell
published many of the arguments of those involved, as well as expressions of public opinion, openly advocating the position
of the activists. In Goodell's case, she printed Chief Justice Ryan's opinion denying Goodell's application, along with a reprint
of an article from the Wisconsin State Journal and an editorial by attorney Ole Mosness criticizing the court's decision. n351
Chief Justice Ryan claimed that Wisconsin law did not provide for women's admission to the bar, and following Supreme
Court Justice Bradley's concurrence in Bradwell, asserted that engaging in the practice of law was against women's nature.
n352 The Wisconsin press however, called the decisions unjust and predicted that, "there will be very decided dissenting
opinions expressed by members of the bar and by the people." n353 The Journal contended that if practicing law would place
women's purity in danger, "it would be better to reconstruct the court and bar, than to exclude women." n354
Bradwell also highlighted the sociological jurisprudence arguments of Lockwood, and her supporters, which occurred at
the federal level. n355 In 1876, Belva Lockwood, a licensed and practicing attorney in the District of Columbia, persuaded
attorney Albert Riddle to petition for her admission to practice law before the United States Supreme Court. n356 Chief Justice
Morrison R. Waite denied her application, asserting that history and the court rules established only men could practice
before the highest court. n357 Lockwood responded in accord with the new sociological jurisprudence, that "it was the glory of
each generation to make its own precedents." n358 She also determined to change the court rules.
Lockwood and her supporters used sociological jurisprudence arguments in support of the new law she drafted to allow
women to be admitted to practice [*620] law before the United States Supreme Court on the same terms as men. By 1878,
with the help of Representative John Montgomery Glover, Lockwood had secured the passage of her bill in the House of
Representatives. n359 She then submitted a brief in support of the bill to the Senate, asserting that the legislature could and
should admit women because the current social conditions required it. n360 "This country is one that has not hesitated when
the necessity has arisen to make precedents ... ," she wrote, "the more extended practice and the more extended public
opinion [supporting women lawyers] ... has already been accomplished. Ah! That very opinion ... [is] asking you for that
special act now so nearly consummated, which shall open this door of labor to women." n361 Lockwood next summoned the
assistance of California Senator Aaron Sargent to win the support of the Senate. n362
Sargent invoked both the principles of liberalism and the developing sociological jurisprudence arguments in his
multiple addresses to Congress promoting the legislation. He asked members to support the bill and end all prohibitions on
women based on their sex, insisting that women were citizens with "the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
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and employment, commensurate with her capacities, as any man has." n363 As evidence, he listed a number of powerful
and accomplished women from history and the current day, including queens, authors, actors, doctors, and lawyers. n364 He
later cited the trend among state legislatures to pass laws prohibiting the use of sex to exclude women from the bar and the
broad national trend toward the social advancement of women, noting "it is generally recognized that women are taking
themselves a wider sphere of action and filling it well." n365 Finally, he offered two petitions supporting the bill - the first
signed by one hundred and sixty lawyers from the District of Columbia and the second signed by lawyers from New York.
n366 The bill passed thirty-nine to twenty in February 1879. n367
Throughout the 1880s, the dominant male bar increasingly accepted the activists' campaigns and their sociological
jurisprudence arguments for women's rights. Although some state courts continued to resist, one by one, state and local bars
admitted women. n368 Carrie Burnham Kilgore's application in Pennsylvania illustrates the transition that was taking place
both in the law [*621] and ideology. In 1874, Judge Biddle and the Pennsylvania board of examiners refused to even let
Kilgore sit for the bar exam. n369 Twelve years later, in 1886, Kilgore overcame Biddle, and those like him, who were still
overtly clinging to divisions based on gender status and the limitations of coverture. n370
Her fight wasn't easy. In 1884, ten years after her application to take the bar exam, Kilgore applied to practice law
before all four of the Common Court of Pleas (CCP) in Pennsylvania. n371 Only No. 4 admitted her. n372 Judge Biddle, in CCP
No. 1, once again voiced his objection to women working in the public sphere. n373 This time however, Kilgore had support.
First, Justice Pierce filed a dissent, arguing the tenants of liberalism and the changed social circumstances, which permitted
women to hold offices and operate in the public sphere, required women be allowed to practice law. n374 Next, Kilgore
persuaded the Pennsylvania legislature to prohibit sex as a barrier for admission to practice law. n375 Finally, in 1886, the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court admitted Kilgore to its bar. n376 Kilgore then returned to CCP No. 1 and demanded Judge Biddle
admit her. n377 With "deep disgust," Biddle acquiesced. n378
During the fifteen years since Bradwell had first articulated the sociological jurisprudence arguments for why women
could be lawyers, the sociological evidence to support her arguments had grown considerably. When Bradwell criticized
Biddle and the Pennsylvania Common Court of Pleas for its 1884 ruling, she accused them of maintaining a backward
position in a time when even the United States Supreme Court had advanced its position on the rights of women. n379 "We
well remember when the question of admitting women to the bar was presented to the Supreme Court of the United States,
for the first time by writ of error," Bradwell wrote. n380 "But time, an act of Congress, and public opinion have changed the
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and now women are admitted to the bar of that august tribunal upon the
same terms as men." n381 The law activists could not change the minds of judges like Biddle, but they were slowly,
incrementally, able to use the law to overcome them.
[*622] Despite these advances, working within the established government institutions allowed severe limitations on
women's rights to remain in place. n382 The law activists, consequently, worked to develop a larger network of support to
advance their law reform campaigns. n383 Through the 1880s, women lawyers often practiced in isolation from each other.
The isolation occurred because except in places like Chicago and New York, there were only one or two women lawyers
admitted in most states. n384 Even with their male advocates, their small and diffused numbers did not engender them with
sufficient power to enact their broader law reform agenda. By the end of the decade, therefore, women lawyers increasingly
looked to nongovernmental organizations to generate the support they needed to secure women's legal equality.
III. Women Lawyers and NGOs
In the late 1880s, women lawyers joined with other women's rights activists in an effort to use their social capital as political
power to support their law reform agenda. They did so by first formalizing their own networks. Building on Bradwell's work,
women lawyers began to collect and publish information on themselves and their work, and then came together - both
physically and virtually - forming networks that amplified their voices. n385 Simultaneously, women lawyers joined other
local, national, and transnational women's rights associations. They educated the membership on women's legal rights and
disabilities, set a course of action, mobilized the members to support their agenda, and then translated their collective energy
into a new form of nongovernmental power. n386 Finally, they acted as brokers of this new power, creating pathways for
formerly marginalized women to influence governance. These efforts enhanced law activists' campaigns to incrementally
secure women's rights through law reforms.
A. Women Lawyers' Networks and Women's Associations
As their numbers increased, women lawyers wanted to know about each other, in part, to dispel persistent, popular arguments
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that they did not exist. n387 They also wanted to draw support from each other and share strategies on how to overcome
the pervasive gender discrimination within the legal profession. n388 Finally, they wanted to develop a critical mass to support
their law reform strategy and secure women's legal equality. n389 Although not all women lawyers [*623] were law activists,
during the nineteenth century, most supported their efforts to secure women's civil and political rights.
In the 1880s, a number of women lawyers joined Myra Bradwell's efforts to gather and disseminate information on legal
issues affecting women and on every female attorney in the United States and beyond. For example, in 1886, Catherine
Waite, a long-time activist and colleague of Bradwell's, founded a new legal magazine, the Chicago Law Times, that she used
to promote the cause of women's rights and the cause and work of women lawyers. n390 In 1887, Waite published an article by
Ellen Martin, a Chicago lawyer, that documented the numbers and status of women lawyers throughout the country. n391
Martin lamented that women lawyers were "widely scattered," but used their existence and experiences as evidence that male
lawyers were no longer opposed to women's admission and practice in the profession. n392 Through the next decade and into
the twentieth century, women lawyers continued to count, list, and celebrate their growing numbers. n393
There were others that exaggerated the import and influence of women lawyers with an aim towards bringing them
together. For example, in 1888, Ada Bittenbender, a lawyer in Nebraska, wrote about the accomplishments of women
lawyers and their milestones in the United States and throughout the world. n394 She posited that women lawyers had moved
beyond the fight for admission and had secured positions of power within the legal system. n395 She also highlighted the two
newly established women lawyer associations: the Equity Club and the Women's Inter-National Bar Association. n396 Without
an overt appeal, Bittenbender (who was a member of both) n397 encouraged the others to join together.
The Equity Club was one of the first formal organizations of women lawyers. n398 Founded in 1886 by seven women
students and graduates of the University of Michigan Law School, the Club served as a centralized correspondence for
women lawyers locally, nationally, and transnationally. n399 As Virginia Drachman explains, the Club gave women lawyers
and law students a means to "transcend the geographic distance that separated them and to [*624] build a community of
women." n400 They also began to form their own committees within larger women's associations, including within one of the
first transnational women's associations, the International Council of Women (ICW). n401
The ICW was the formalization of a movement initiated in the early 1880s by women suffragists in Great Britain,
France, and the United States, most prominently Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, with a goal to join together
women in the campaign for political equality. n402 To meet that end, the U. S. National Woman Suffrage Association in 1888
sponsored an international woman's conference in Washington, D. C. n403 Catharine Waugh (McCulloch), a newly admitted
woman lawyer from Illinois and a longtime women's rights activist, shared information about the meeting with other women
lawyers through a letter to the Equity Club. n404 Waugh sought to situate it within the living history of the women's rights
movement:
All the good women, the brilliant, the philanthropic, the noted that we had ever heard of seemed to be there, except those that
were dead, and as for them, I do believe those dear old saints who worked so hard, long years ago, were present in spirit,
looking down on us with great joy, that their daughters had so nearly approached their long hoped for goal. n405
The women at the conference established the International Council of Women, an entity intended to be a parent organization
to National Councils that it hoped women would establish in their individual countries. n406
The ICW immediately invoked law as its primary strategy to secure women's emancipation. n407 Ardent suffragists and
radical activists, as Leila Rupp explains, criticized the ICW for maintaining this conservative approach to attain women's
rights. n408 But its lawyer members believed it could affect root change for women. At its founding conference ICW members
discussed women's legal inequality as a wrong "common to all races and nations." n409 The consensus of the Council was that
the best course to alleviate these wrongs was for women themselves to establish laws and oversee their implementation. n410
The ICW's lawyer members quickly helped the organization develop an agenda of transnational law reform.
At the inaugural meeting, some of the lawyer attendees formed the Woman's Inter-National Bar Association (WIBA),
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establishing a foundation for a nongovernmental network that would create new avenues of influence for [*625]
women. n411 The WIBA delegates established an agenda with four broad goals by the end of the conference. n412 The first two,
to "open law schools to women" and "to remove all disabilities to admission of women to the bar, and to secure their
eligibility to the bench[,]" were intended to increase women's presence and standing within the legal profession. n413 The
second two goals, "to disseminate knowledge concerning woman's legal status" and "secure better legal conditions for
women," sought to use information about women's legal inequality to effect reforms in the social and legal rights of all
women. n414 The intent of the WIBA was to use this international forum to pressure national governments to reform their own
laws, systems, and institutions. n415 As Keck and Sikkink explain, transnational advocacy networks provided "alternative
channels of communication [for v]oices that are suppressed in their own societies ... [and] can project and amplify their
concerns into an international arena, which in turn can echo back into their own countries." n416
During the 1890s, law activists increasingly used the strategy of information politics, the method of reporting facts and
motivating action - through local, national, and transnational advocacy networks. n417 They continued to publish articles about
women lawyers with aims to increase their network, advance public awareness of their growing numbers and status, and win
support for their cause. n418 One of these articles reported the results of a study by Leila Robinson, a Massachusetts lawyer
who tried for twelve years, to locate every woman lawyer in the United States. n419 Robinson explained that her project was
necessary to overcome the prevalent misleading information that women lawyers were as real as "sea-serpents." n420 She
attempted to unite women lawyers together in their cause by describing them, and herself, as "sisters in ... law." n421
Additionally, in 1893 through a variety of forums that all converged at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, women
lawyers attempted to use their networks and information politics to influence reform and advance women's rights. n422
B. Women Lawyers and the World's Columbian Exposition
During the World's Columbian Exposition, n423 transnational advocacy networks of women lawyers advocated for women's
legal equality in three separate venues. The first involved women lawyers working with other women [*626] professionals to
advance women's position within the learned professions and to garner support for their law reform strategy to secure full
emancipation and equality for all women. n424 The second venue involved women lawyers working within the single-sex ICW
to use the social capital of the Council and its members to create a new form of power and influence for women to secure
equal rights across the globe. n425 The third venue involved women lawyers working within the established legal and political
institutions, representing women's interests and serving as a bridge to provide other activists an avenue into those institutions.
n426 This three-tiered strategy modeled the approach law activists followed throughout the twentieth century.
The first of the three organized activities was a separatist conference. n427 It evolved out of the protests Myra Bradwell
led in the fall of 1889 against the exclusion of women from the organizational activities of the Exposition. n428 Over 2000
women, including many of the women lawyers and doctors in Chicago, joined Bradwell in her demand that a Women's
Department be created to ensure the inclusion of women's work at the Exposition. n429 But during the campaign to establish a
Women's Department, the women activists split into two factions. n430 One faction, led by Bertha Palmer, wanted to create a
women's exposition that would focus only on women's industries, artistic endeavors, and charities. n431 The second faction,
comprised of women professionals and equal rights activists, wanted to use the exposition to highlight all of women's
achievements and political aspirations. n432
The women professionals and activists organized as the Queen Isabella Association (QIA) (honoring the woman who
made Columbus' voyage possible) and engaged in extensive campaigns to ensure all of women's accomplishments and their
political agenda would be included in the fair. n433 They even published a journal to advance their position. n434 But Palmer's
faction won control of the Board of Lady Managers, n435 and in 1892, officially declined the QIA's application for space on
the fairgrounds. n436 In response, the QIA secured a clubhouse two blocks from the fairgrounds, established separate medical
and law departments, and prepared to provide a forum during the Exposition for professional women and women's rights
campaigns. n437
The QIA law department used the opportunity to advance the development of a national network of women lawyers. It
sponsored a conference specifically [*627] for women lawyers that occurred during the Exposition. n438 The goals for the
conference were twofold: to provide a forum to promote camaraderie among women lawyers and to advance their political
agenda. n439 The lawyers acknowledged that they had a different agenda from many women's associations, yet, they sought to
ensure that they would not be excluded from future important events or organizations. n440 "[Women lawyers] should have
some kind of organization," Ellen Martin, the chair of the law department, explained, "so that they could control their
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representation in the general organizations of women." n441
For three days in August 1893, women lawyers strengthened their network and crystallized their mission for women's
equality through law reform. n442 Fifteen of the most prominent women lawyers from the United States spoke on a variety of
legal topics. n443 Their themes focused on campaigns to attain political equality, efforts to challenge laws that excluded or
limited the rights of women, and strategies to enhance their work as lawyers in the profession. n444 They also recounted the
history of women's efforts to enter into the legal profession. n445 The women wanted to ensure that their fight to break through
gender barriers over the past twenty years was recorded and remembered by future generations as they continued the fight.
n446 The presenters included Arabella Mansfield, Ada Kepley, and Carrie Burnham Kilgore. n447 Ellen Martin delivered Myra
Bradwell's address, as Bradwell was too ill with cancer to attend. n448 The law department ended its conference by founding
the National League of Women Lawyers, an organization intended to provide United States women lawyers a means of
helping one another in their legal practice. n449
The second activity women lawyers organized occurred under the official auspices of the Exposition. n450 The Women's
Auxiliary invited the National Council of Women (NCW), the United States branch of the ICW, to hold the ICW's first
quinquennial meeting as part of the Exposition. n451 The stated [*628] objective of the weeklong conference, "Congress of
Representative Women," was to provide a forum where "the progress of women, in all lands and in all departments of human
progress," could be presented. n452 One of its main themes was the need for legal reforms at local and national levels to grant
women political rights in a movement toward political equality. n453 The NCW President, May Wright Sewall, used the forum
to promote her vision of cohesive gender equality, "not for divided womanhood as against a separate manhood, but a new
march for a unified, harmonious, onstepping humanity[.]" n454
Sewell's remarks exemplified the strategy of the Congress: ICW members, both activists and lawyers, attempted to use
the international forum to identify central values and reframe the debates, with the hope that their pressure for reform would
reflect back into their individual countries. n455 For example, Florence Fenwick Miller, a member of the Woman's Franchise
League of England, identified goals that her organization had in common with the other organizations represented. n456 She
described the Franchise League's law reform campaigns to secure women's equal treatment and rights in divorce actions,
equality in the intestate inheritance of property, and the parliamentary vote. n457 Miller sought to unite the international
audience in support of those campaigns, urging: "Let us take a firm ground on equality, and see that the laws between men
and women shall be made equal." n458 Miller further emphasized the need for international pressure to change national laws
because there was little support for the campaigns at home. n459 J. Ellen Foster, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., also advocated
for equality of rights by focusing on values men and women shared. n460 Foster minimized the differences between the sexes
and instead emphasized the ideals of liberty and the commonality of humanity. n461
Women lawyers also participated in the Congress of Women events that were sponsored by the Woman's Auxiliary (and
not part of the ICW), further disseminating information on the growing numbers of women lawyers throughout the world,
their work, and the critical role they played in the efforts to secure rights and justice for women. n462 Ada Bittenbender
contributed an article to The National Exposition Souvenir documenting the long history of women learned in the law and the
challenges and accomplishments of women lawyers to her current day. n463 Charlotte Holt delivered an address on women's
rights and on the role of women and their place in the profession at a congress in the [*629] Woman's Building. n464 Holt,
who had devoted the previous seven years to running a women's legal aid society in Chicago, urged that the greatest quality a
woman could possess was "the spirit of justice." n465 Holt also proposed that the efforts and accomplishments of women
lawyers be judged not by the male standard of measuring monetary reward or prestige, but by the daily work that a woman
lawyer does. n466
The third organized activity of women lawyers during the 1893 Exposition involved a direct intervention with the male
bar. As their own conference illustrated, the issues of advancing women's social and legal position were intricately
intertwined with their goal of advancing women's position within the legal profession. Within the women's movement, from
the local level to the international, women lawyers continued to lead rights claims campaigns to secure women's full
emancipation as they continued to fight to establish themselves as respected members of the bar. n467 Their work to both
mobilize women's rights activists and reach and influence legal and political institutions depended on their integration into
the system. Women lawyers, therefore, demanded that they be included in the Exposition's official Congress on
Jurisprudence and Law Reform. n468
The women lawyers infiltrated the Law Congress in stages with the critical help of key male supporters, including Myra
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Bradwell's husband. James Bradwell was one of the eighteen men who comprised the auxiliary in charge of determining
the composition of the Congress. n469 Myra Bradwell served as chair of the committee, while their daughter Bessie Bradwell
Helmer, who was also a lawyer, served as vice chair, and Catharine Waugh McCulloch served as a member. n470 The
women's law committee rejected the idea of holding a separate women's congress on law reform and demanded that they be
included in the official law congress. n471 Myra Bradwell explained that though a separate women's congress would have
allowed them more control of their program, "after mature deliberation, the woman's committee concluded that the interests
of women in the profession of law would be best conserved by a joint congress." n472 After lengthy debate, the joint
committee invited thirty-five men and four women to present papers at the four-day Congress. n473
The women's committee used the Congress to project the voices and concerns of the transnational women's rights
networks into the international public arena. They invited Eliza Orme, a lawyer from England, Cornelia Sorabji, a lawyer
from India, and Mary Greene and Clara Foltz, both lawyers from the [*630] United States, to present papers at the law
reform congress. n474 Each presenter discussed their country's laws and social customs that restricted women's right to work,
control their wages, and participate in governance. n475 Each also advocated for law reforms that would secure women's full
emancipation and ensure them equal rights and treatment before the law. n476 The committee and the speakers used the
international forum to disseminate information about the injustices in individual countries and their reform efforts to advance
women's rights and secure women's equality.
In many ways, the World's Columbian Exposition marked the passing of leadership of the women's law reform
movement in Illinois from Myra Bradwell to Catharine Waugh McCulloch. Ellen Carol DuBois perceptively identified the
strategic similarity between Bradwell's 1870 New Departure arguments and Catharine McCulloch's 1913 argument that the
United States Constitution allowed the Illinois legislature to grant women the vote in presidential elections. n477 But DuBois
incorrectly assessed that the incidents stood in isolation from each other. n478 By shifting the focus from the woman suffrage
movement to the campaigns of law activists, this Article reveals the continuity between the two events. n479 From the 1860s to
the 1890s, Myra Bradwell and a cadre of law activists insisted that women were citizens, entitled to full citizenship rights and
obligations. They employed a strategy of law reform to incrementally secure women's rights in an effort to secure women's
legal equality. Catharine Waugh McCulloch led that effort into the middle of the twentieth century, perpetuating the model
law activists employed through the rest of the century.
IV. A Brief Survey of the Legacy of the Women's Law Reform Movement
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, Catharine Waugh McCulloch and a select group of women lawyers emerged as
the next leaders of the law reform movement. As the new century ushered in a new generation of women lawyers, the law
activists carried the movement forward. Although women remained a very small percentage of the legal profession until the
last quarter of the twentieth century, their numbers increased dramatically from their beginnings, especially in industrialized,
urban centers, such as Chicago. n480 The reform efforts of nineteenth-century activists that secured women's civil right to
work and own property allowed some of the new women lawyers - and [*631] many more as the century progressed - to
concentrate on their careers, rather than engage in reform activities. But because the legal and political systems continued to
systematically discriminate against women, n481 even the most dedicated practitioner supported the work of the activists and
the advancement of women's social, civil, and political rights.
This section briefly outlines the legacy of the women's law reform movement. It argues that the three-prong strategy law
activists developed in the nineteenth century formed the model twentieth-century law activists implemented in their
continued efforts for legal equality. This strategy involved: 1) the enactment of positive laws and the development of new
modes of judicial interpretation; 2) the continued infiltration and influence of women in the legal profession; and 3) the
collaboration of law activists with local, national, and international NGOs to enhance their voice within the systems of
governance. The core of these strategies persisted as each generation modified and adjusted their efforts based on new social
and political exigencies. By the end of the twentieth century, the movement nearly secured women's formal equality, but
women's substantive equality remained elusive.
A. Legacy of Positive Law and Judicial Interpretation Campaigns
Catharine Waugh McCulloch advocated for the enactment of a plethora of positive laws during her fifty-year tenure as a
leader in the law reform movement. n482 Like her predecessors, she believed that through the enactment of positive laws,
women would secure legal and substantive equality. n483 McCulloch earned her law license in 1886 and worked with many of
the founders of the law reform movement, including Catharine Waite and Myra Bradwell. n484 But McCulloch was a
generation younger than the pioneers. She did not have to fight to attend law school or to receive her law license, yet she did
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struggle to earn a living in her chosen profession. n485 She therefore continued the movement, but adapted it, allowing it
to transition into the new age.
[*632] The Progressive Era had spawned a diverse group of reformers engaged in overlapping and sometimes
contradictory efforts. n486 McCulloch and the other law activists sought to use the social and political capital of these groups
to enact and enforce positive laws that advanced the rights of women. n487 They continued the strategy of infiltrating these
various associations and developed an educational component. They determined to both educate a broad base of women on
their legal rights and to inform and persuade men and women to support their reforms. n488 The Chicago Woman's Club
(CWC), the most prestigious and powerful woman's club in the city, was one of the first of the groups they infiltrated. n489
The law activists persuaded the CWC to establish the Chicago Political Equality League (CPEL) as an affiliate
association. n490 Its purpose, "to promote the study of political science and government and foster and extend the political
rights and privileges of women," enabled the activists to pursue their dual objectives of education and law reform. n491 They
gave free public lectures and held courses on women's legal rights and practical legal matters. n492 They also advocated a
wide-range of positive laws that sought women's equal right to suffrage, education, divorce, and compensation. n493 Their
efforts won the support of a vast number of club women throughout the city. n494
[*633] Law activists in Illinois and throughout the country also established their own institutions. In 1911, the New
York City Women Lawyers' Club (established in 1899) transformed itself into the National Association of Women Lawyers.
n495 It published the Women Lawyers' Journal (WLJ) and urged women lawyers in other cities to join. n496 The WLJ enhanced
the efforts of the Chicago Legal News, by both disseminating information on women lawyers throughout the world and
reporting on legal issues affecting women. n497 Women lawyers in other cities began to form local associations and joined the
NAWL as affiliates. n498 In 1914, nine women lawyers in Chicago established the Women's Bar Association of Illinois
(WBAI). n499 Its two-fold mission, like its parent organization, was to advance the interests of women lawyers and the
women's law reform movement. n500
Catharine Waugh McCulloch became president of the WBAI in 1916 during its formative years. n501 She held the office
for four years, shaping the association in the law activist tradition. n502 The WBAI maintained its own active law reform
agenda, which initially included the Nineteenth Amendment, a Public Defender League for Girls (to protect the rights of girls
who were subject to the Morals court), women jury service, and the eight-hour day. n503 It supported women's campaigns for
judicial and political, elected and appointed offices. n504 The WBAI worked with other associations to advance women's
rights as its members also worked inside other local and national associations. n505
The League of Women Voters was one of these associations. n506 After women secured full suffrage through the
Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) became the National
League of Women Voters (NLWV) to ensure that women capitalized on their right to vote and continued to advance law
reforms. n507 Women lawyers joined NLWV and its local branches and immediately established its Committee on Uniform
Laws Concerning Women, to advance a law reform [*634] agenda. n508 McCulloch chaired the national committee and set a
legislative platform for state chapters to pursue issues that included: equal guardianship rights, higher age of consent laws,
the right for woman to control her own wages and property, and women's jury service. n509 In Illinois, the LWV's local
branches worked with the WBAI to finally secure women's jury service in 1939. n510
Both the WBAI and the NAWL were initially ambivalent on the issues that divided the women's rights movement
during this time. There was a well-documented split between the advocates of protective labor legislation enacted to ease the
physical and financial abuse of working women and children, and the advocates of the 1923 Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA), proposed to establish women's formal legal equality with men. n511 Law activists consistently advocated for women's
substantive equality. n512 During the early part of the twentieth century, they supported the protective labor legislation laws
without repudiating the concept of equal rights. n513 By the late 1930s, after the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act
(1938), law activists began to argue that protective labor legislation was no longer necessary. n514 Some supported Alice
Paul's 1923 ERA, while others argued for an alternative Equal Rights Amendment, hoping it would secure substantive
equality for women. n515 But regardless of their position on the ERA, they continued to work together for other law reforms to
advance women's rights. n516
The law reforms for which NAWL, its state branches, and other law activists advocated throughout the second half of
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the twentieth century continued the work of their predecessors. They focused much of their efforts on women's [*635]
rights in marriage and work. NAWL, in particular, fought for new divorce laws that vastly expanded the grounds for divorce,
abolishing the necessity of fault. n517 It worked through the American Bar Association (ABA) for almost a quarter century to
create the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act. n518 NAWL also joined the fight for the enactment of the 1963 Equal Pay Act,
which prohibited employers from paying women less than men because of their sex, and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act, which banned sex discrimination by employers with more than twenty-five employees. n519 One of its past presidents,
Marguerite Rawalt, became a leader in securing women's legal equality, a federal effort that laid the foundation for the
second wave of the women's movement. n520
In the 1960s, a small group of law activists led a renewed campaign to secure women's legal equality through federal
statutes, United States constitutional provisions, and federal judicial decisions. Three lawyers, Rawalt, Pauli Murray, and
Esther Peterson, a labor activist, were at the core of this effort. n521 They served together on the Presidential Commission on
the Status of Women's (PCSW) and Committee on Civil and Political Rights. n522 Rawalt advocated using the legislature and
the enactment of the ERA as the best means to secure legal equality. n523 Murray advocated using the courts and a judicial
reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. n524 They both supported Title VII and worked together for its enactment and
for its subsequent enforcement by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). n525
By the 1970s there was a unified women's rights movement committed to the law reform strategy. n526 Most activists
who had previously opposed the ERA changed their position. n527 Law activists who had been divided over whether to pursue
women's equality through the ERA or the Fourteenth Amendment agreed to pursue both. n528 During this era, feminists
established a number of new organizations, including the National Organization of Women (NOW). n529 This organization,
like many others, quickly established a law reform agenda and soon supported the ERA and a strategy of litigation based on
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. n530 The Women's Liberation movement was underway.
[*636] The account of women's law reform activities from the 1970s through the end of the twentieth century is much
more familiar. State legislatures and Congress enacted an abundance of laws intended to achieve formal and legal equality.
n531 In some cases, the Supreme Court applied the Equal Protection Clause to strike down laws that discriminated on the basis
of sex. n532 But Supreme Court Justices disagreed on the level of scrutiny the Court should apply in such cases, and the
strategy failed to yield the legal equality law activists hoped it would. n533 Most scholars assess that during the last quarter of
the twentieth century, the legal content of equality became "formalistic, exclusive, and impoverished," privileging white,
upper-class women over working-class women and women of color. n534 Others suggest, even with the changes, the law
remained "male," continuing to discriminate against all women. n535 Law activists therefore sustained their attempts to
influence judicial interpretation through many avenues, including increasing women's influence within the profession and
placing women into judicial positions. n536
[*637]
B. Legacy of Women Lawyers Professional Advancement Campaigns
Throughout the twentieth century, women lawyers continued nineteenth-century efforts to advance women's stature within
the legal profession. Although they were able to found their own organizations, they nonetheless worked to infiltrate male
professional associations as well as the judiciary. n537 From the movement's beginnings, the goal was to transform systems of
governance to operate on a principle of equality, not to establish separate women's systems. n538 Activist men were, and
remained, critical members of the coalition, but the women members believed they needed to be insiders themselves to
advance their agenda. n539 Women therefore worked to increase their standing within the bar and to win election to judicial
and political seats. n540
During the first decades of the twentieth century, women lawyers employed several tactics to work their way inside.
First, they continued the nineteenth-century strategy of information politics. For example, Bessie Bradwell Helmer took over
for her mother's business and continued to edit and publish the Chicago Legal News until 1925. n541 In the mid-1930s, Grace
Harte, a leader within the WBAI, began writing a weekly column in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, the primary legal
newspaper of the Chicago bar, on women's legal issues and the activities of the WBAI. n542 Women lawyers also attempted to
join the mainstream, male bar associations as individuals and collectively. n543
At both the local and national level, these associations discriminated in their membership, either in rules or in practice,
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based on sex, race, religion, and ethnicity. Although neither the Chicago Bar Association nor the American Bar
Association ever explicitly excluded women from its membership, in practice, each only admitted small numbers of women
through the first half of the twentieth century and each relegated those to the periphery. n544 The ABA House of Delegates
was comprised of state and local bar associations but excluded women's bar associations. n545 The WBAI fought for and
finally won a seat in the ABA's House of Delegates during World War II. n546 But the male stranglehold [*638] on the ABA
was commanding, and women did not gain significant power in the association until the 1980s.
In 1986, law activists persuaded the ABA House of Delegates to adopt the goal: "To Promote Full and Equal
Participation in the Profession by Minorities and Women." n547 The following year, it created the ABA Commission on
Women in the Profession with a mission to "assess the status of women in the legal profession, identify barriers to
advancement, and recommend to the ABA actions to address problems identified." n548 Hillary Rodham Clinton served as its
first chair and immediately launched a study on the status of women lawyers. n549 The investigation found that "although
women have made significant advancements in gaining access to the practice of law ... opportunities in the legal profession
remain less available to women, at all levels, than to their male colleagues." n550
The Commission report sparked a number of state and local bar associations to conduct their own studies of women's
status in the profession. n551 Most found similar incidents of discrimination. n552 Bar associations passed a flurry of initiatives
and resolutions that alleviated most of the overt discrimination women lawyers and law students had reported, but subsequent
studies in 1995 and 2003 found that insidious forms of discrimination remained for all women, and particularly for women of
color. n553 These reports acknowledged there had been "incremental progress," but noted that barriers to women's equality,
"reinforced by entrenched attitudes[,]" persisted. n554 Their findings imply what radical feminists and some legal scholars
have suggested, that neither law reforms nor time will secure women's substantive equality. n555
Law activists' efforts to infiltrate the judiciary followed a similar path. Initially, isolated victories occurred. n556 In
Illinois, for example, Catharine Waugh McCulloch was elected Justice of the Peace in Evanston (1907-1913) and appointed
master in chancery in the Cook County Superior Court (1917-1925). n557 In 1923, Mary Bartelme was the first woman elected
to the Circuit Court of Cook County. n558 Florence Allen accomplished two firsts. In 1922, in [*639] Ohio, she became the
first woman elected to a state supreme court. n559 In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to the Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals, where she became the first woman judge sitting in a federal court of appeals. n560 Forty-seven years later,
President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman Supreme Court Justice. n561
In each of these elections and appointments, law activists used their networks to support women candidates. n562 Each
victory was celebrated as a significant advance, and law activists believed that these changes in the face of the judiciary
would lead to a fundamental transformation in the legal systems. n563 But, at the end of the twentieth century, although more
women had entered the judiciary, and even as a second woman had been appointed to the United States Supreme Court, n564
the transformation had not occurred. n565 Law activists' networks, nonetheless, continued to flourish, locally, nationally, and
internationally. n566
C. Legacy of Campaigns through NGOs
From the first international meeting of women's rights activists in 1888 through the twenty-first century, women lawyers have
attempted to use NGOs to advance their law reform strategy. Twentieth-century law activists adapted and employed the
model established by the nineteenth-century activists: exposing and disseminating information on the legal wrongs affecting
women; motivating governments to act to correct the legal wrongs to women; and expanding the ways that women could
participate in governance. n567 The International Council of Women held quinquennial meetings through the first half of the
twentieth century. n568 Its Committee on Laws regarding the Legal Position of Women consistently collected and publicized
information on women's legal [*640] inequality and advocated laws and policies that would advance women's position on a
wide range of issues, including: "affiliation orders for illegitimate children; women's right of guardianship; marriage and
divorce laws; the removal of sex disqualification; [and] the payment of alimony when the debtor had left the country." n569
Law activists supplemented these activities with law reform efforts through international bar associations and government
institutions. n570
The first of these activities began in the interwar years. In 1938, Dorothy Kenyon, a New York City attorney, became
the United States representative to the League of Nations Committee for the Study of the Status of Women. n571 She was one
of seven lawyers, from as many nations, responsible for studying women's legal status internationally. n572 World War II
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made completion of their work impossible, but after the War, law activists continued their efforts through a number of
other organizations. NAWL became members of both the Inter-American Bar Association and the International Association
of Women Lawyers. n573 In 1946, NAWL and ICW participated in the establishment of the United Nations and debates over
the content of its charter, which ultimately included a resolution to promote and encourage "respect for human rights and for
fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion[.]" n574 They also supported Kenyon as
the United States delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 1946. n575
The establishment of the CSW was controversial however. Some women's rights activists believed that women's issues
should not be separated, but should instead be addressed by the commission on Human Rights, since women were human
beings. n576 They explained, "segregation was the one thing which women had always fought against (whether in the kitchen,
in purdah or behind the veil)." n577 Proponents of a special commission for women's issues didn't disagree, but asserted that
the disabilities women faced were "so varied, subtle, and complex" that they required special consideration or they risked
being overlooked. n578 Kenyon understood both sides of the debate and promised "to develop a program of work and
recommendations calculated to make women's rights come alive." n579
[*641] Kenyon sat on the CSW for four years (1946-1950) and attempted to use her position to advance the argument
that women's issues were human issues. n580 Kenyon was a committed law activist who believed, like the founders of the
women's rights movement, that "women are people, that they are human beings with human rights like every other human
being[.]" n581 She used the CSW as an investigative tool, adapting the strategy of information politics. The Commission
gathered information from every member nation on the laws and customs that affected women's interests and on the way
those laws and customs were applied. n582 She also used the CSW as a "watchdog" of other United Nations (U.N.)
commissions, to ensure that they were including women's interests as human interests. n583 She explained:
We are, if you like, the spark plug of women's interests everywhere. Thus, and thus only, can we make sure that women will
not be discriminated against, that they will be given full opportunity to participate in the work of the world and that they will
never again be segregated. n584
For the rest of the twentieth century, women's rights and law activists from around the globe worked through the CSW to
advance women's equality and women's rights. n585 Their primary strategies included information politics and law reforms.
For fifteen years, the CSW gathered and disseminated information on the political and legal status of women and drafted
international laws to advance women's rights. n586 In 1952, the General Assembly adopted the first of these laws, the
Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which established and protected women's equal political rights, including the
right to vote and hold office. n587 During the 1950s and 1960s, the CSW also secured a number of laws to end women's
discrimination and protect their rights in marriage and in the workplace. n588 Their efforts culminated in 1979 with the
adoption of the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which some
describe this as the "international women's bill of rights." n589
[*642] For the last quarter of the twentieth century, a small group of law activists once again led the next wave of the
international women's movement. n590 They operated through international committees and the United Nations. n591 This wave
began with the International Women's Year and the first U.N. World Conference on Women (1975), and was followed by the
U.N.'s Decade for Women (1976-1985) and two more U.N. world conferences (Copenhagen 1980, Nairobi 1985). n592 These
events focused on strengthening and enforcing women's rights through international law, particularly CEDAW. n593 Near the
end of the decade, CSW began to focus on ending violence against women and drafted the Declaration for the Elimination of
Violence against Women, which the General Assembly adopted in 1993. n594 CSW continued to employ law reform as a
strategy, but reframed the issues as human rights, rather than women's rights. n595
The decision to characterize women's rights as human rights was once again controversial. Opponents, primarily
feminist law professors, asserted, like their predecessors, that this decision would misguidedly shift the focus from complex
power inequalities to a simplified goal of possessive individualism. n596 Proponents argued that casting women's rights as
human rights exposed harms that were otherwise unseen or dismissed when perceived as issues only affecting women. n597
This time, those in favor of the human rights strategy prevailed. They espoused the theory at three successive conferences:
(1) in Toronto (1992), "Linking Hands for Changing Laws - Women's Rights as Human Rights Around the World;" (2) in
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Vienna as part of the Conference on Human Rights (1993); and (3) in Beijing (1995). n598 The primary focus of these
meetings was once again to develop strategies to effect reforms in [*643] women's rights across the globe. n599 They sought
to make "governments - their laws, policies and actions - accountable to women." n600 The activists acknowledged that they
had to create laws to establish women's rights, to ensure that the laws were interpreted and enforced, and they also recognized
the work of "feminist lawyers" in pursuing those ends. n601
Hilary Rodham Clinton's address to the Women's Plenary Session in Beijing was the capstone of the campaign. n602 She
asked the transnational advocacy network of women and human rights activists to continue in the effort to secure social, civil,
and political rights for women. n603 She emphasized women's need for "access to education, health care, jobs and credit [and]
the chance [for women] to enjoy basic legal and human rights and to participate fully in the political life of" their country. n604
She further acknowledged the network's power, through activities including the conference, to "compel governments and
peoples everywhere to listen, look and face the world's most pressing problems ... and to give voice to women everywhere
whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard." n605 At the end of the conference, the CSW enacted the Beijing
Declaration and a Platform for Action, which incorporated its previous law reforms and determined to establish women's
legal and substantive equality. n606
The women's rights campaigns of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have yielded limited, incremental rights for
women in the United States and many countries throughout the world but have still failed to secure women's substantive
equality. Women's rights activists have always been aware of the limitations of their results of their campaigns, but have
persisted, maintaining a core belief in their liberating power. As early as 1906, Catharine Waugh McCulloch acknowledged
both that "the horrified protests of thousands of wronged women have gradually brought some changes in [the] law," and that
"they are not sufficiently far reaching." n607 The contrast is exemplified in the 2007 presidential campaign of Hilary Rodham
Clinton. A lawyer, senator, and presidential candidate, she represented the gains of the women's rights movement. But her
1995 speech and her twenty-first-century agenda exposed the legal inequalities that continue.
Conclusion
Throughout the nineteenth century, a component of the women's rights movement implemented a strategy of law reform to
secure women's legal equality. This faction was connected yet distinguishable from other factions [*644] within the
movement, because its leaders maintained a democratic vision of society based on principles of liberty and equality. The
faction emerged in the years after the Civil War, as the leaders of the antebellum movement divided over issues of principle
and strategy. It was led by a cadre of women lawyers who attempted to use the law to abolish the extant status regime and
replace it with a system of individual rights. They believed that such a system would secure women's substantive equality.
The law activists operated from two positions in their campaigns to win women's legal equality. They worked within the
dominant systems of governance, where they created new forms of legal reasoning to influence the enactment, interpretation,
and enforcement of positive laws. Simultaneously, they worked within nongovernmental organizations where they created
new methods of information politics to influence legal and political institutions. Their efforts secured civil and political rights
for women incrementally. n608 They also formed the basis of the law reform movement that continued through the twentieth
century.
The campaigns to secure women's legal equality endured for two centuries. They were most effective when large social
movements supported them. n609 But, even in periods where there was little outside support, a small group of law activists
steadfastly implemented law reform strategies. The law activists believed that securing women's legal equality was the most
effective means to securing women's substantive equality, but they understood that it mattered how the law was changed.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century and through the twentieth century, law activists increasingly debated how to shape
laws and influence judicial interpretation in a system that maintained differences based on status. n610 They understood that
establishing formal equality in a system that maintained race and gender hierarchies would not, alone, result in substantive
equality. n611 They also understood that law reforms that accommodated status differences offered relief at the price of
perpetuating the status hierarchy. Yet as they balanced the costs and benefits of each approach and worked toward an accord,
they nonetheless continued their law reform strategy.
Each generation faced unique and particular circumstances that influenced the way they conceptualized and addressed
women's inequality, but there were continuities in both the actors and the strategies. The leaders of each preceding generation
mentored the leaders of the next, who then continued the unfinished campaigns. The 1870s New Departure arguments and the
law reform movement that followed formed the roots of the 1970s arguments for a judicial reinterpretation of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Those efforts and their [*645] consequences now influence the strategies of law activists in the twenty-first
century. Similarly, the transnational advocacy network's law reform campaigns of 1890s established the foundation of the
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United Nations women's international rights campaigns of the 1980s and beyond. The movement's aim to achieve
women's legal equality persists, but substantive equality remains elusive. n612 By the end of the twentieth century the women's
local and national efforts neared a formal, legal equality, and they affected important advances in women's international right.
But significant substantive inequalities remained. n613
The dissonance between formal equality and substantive equality lies at the root of American law and American society.
Changes in legal statutes, and even constitutional provisions, have transformed but not abolished the systems' underlying
status regime. Rather, the legal system has adapted to and manipulated those changes in order to maintain the status regime.
The history of the law reform movement calls into question whether the continued application of the law reform strategy will
ever secure substantive equality. If the answer is no, then law activists must ask whether they should abandon the goal, or
implement alternative, radical strategies.
Legal Topics:
For related research and practice materials, see the following legal topics:
Criminal Law & ProcedureCounselRight to CounselGeneral OverviewLabor & Employment
LawDiscriminationHarassmentRacial HarassmentHostile Work EnvironmentLabor & Employment LawDiscriminationRacial
DiscriminationEmployment PracticesCompensation
FOOTNOTES:
n1. See Senator Hillary Clinton, Former Senator John Edwards, Senator Barack Obama, Governor Bill Richardson, Democratic Presidential
Debate at Saint Anselm College (Jan. 5, 2008) (transcript available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-ddebate.html?
pagewanted=all) [hereinafter The Democratic Primary Debate in New Hampshire] (statement of Sen. Hillary Clinton).
n2. Meet the Press: Hillary Clinton (NBC television broadcast Jan. 13, 2008).
n3. The Democratic Primary Debate in New Hampshire, supra note 1 (statement of Sen. Barack Obama).
n4. Meet the Press: Hillary Clinton, supra note 2.
n5. Id. Secretary Clinton continues to advocate for law reforms to advance women's rights including: the Paycheck Fairness Act to address the pay
disparities between men and women, see Senator Clinton Reintroduces Bill Aimed at Ending Pay Gap, HR.BLR.com (Mar. 7, 2007),
http://hr.blr.com/news.aspx?id=75529, the Prevention First Act to expand family planning services to low-income women, see Glass Booth
Election 2008, Hillary Clinton on Abortion and Birth Control, http://glassbooth.org/explore/index/hillary-clinton/1/abortion-and-birth-control/16/
(last visited June 20, 2009), and the Prevention First Act, Open Congress, S.21: Prevention First Act, http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111s21/show (last visited June 20, 2009).
n6. See The Democratic Primary Debate in New Hampshire, supra note 1 (statement of Sen. Barack Obama).
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n7. Id.
n8. See Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic Of Sex: The Case For Feminist Revolution (1970), for a history of radical feminism in the United
States to 1970 and an argument for a feminist revolution. See also George Sand, To Members of the Central Committee of the Left, in George
Sand: In Her Own Words 410, 411 (Joseph Barry trans., ed., 1979); Lori D. Ginzberg, "The Hearts of Your Readers will Shudder": Fanny Wright,
Infidelity, and American Freethought, 46 Am. Q. 195 (1994) (describing the radical positions of American feminist Frances Wright). See also
Margaret H. McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism 80 (1999), for a non-American,
feminist call for a radical change. Sand, a French author, argued in 1848 that there must be a radical transformation in society before women could
be an effective political force. Id.
n9. See National Organization of Women, Take Action!, http://www.now.org/actions (last visited June 20, 2009) (listing NOW's agenda which is
heavily weighted toward legislative action); see also Equal Rights Advocates, About ERA, http://www.equalrights.org/about/about era.asp (last
visited June 20, 2009) ("Since 1974, [its] mission has been to protect and secure equal rights and economic opportunities for women and girls
through litigation and advocacy."); Feminist Majority, http://feministmajority.org (last visited June 20, 2009) (stating its motto "Working for
Women's Equality from the Streets to the Legislature").
n10. See Ellen Carol DuBois, The Limitations of Sisterhood: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Division in the American Suffrage Movement, 18751902, in Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights 160, 160-61 (1998) [hereinafter DuBois, The Limitations of Sisterhood]; see also Nancy F. Cott,
The Grounding of Modern Feminism 16-17 (1987); Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's
Movement in America 1848-1869, at 40 (1978) [hereinafter DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage].
n11. See Deborah L. Rhode, Justice and Gender: Sex Discrimination and the Law 12-13 (1989); see also Cott, supra note 10, at 16-17; Kathleen S.
Sullivan, Constitutional Context: Women and Rights Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America 6, 84-89 (2007) (arguing that as the early women's
rights activists invoked classic liberalism in order to abolish coverture, they reshaped it). Sullivan argues further that their "version of liberalism
became the definitive of American liberalism." Id. at 6.
n12. Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, Seneca Falls, in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings 76, 80 (Miriam Schneir ed., Vintage
Books ed. 1994) (1972) [hereinafter Declaration].
n13. Id. at 81.
n14. See Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation 175-77 (1998)
(describing the feminist ideology that laws securing women's legal equality in marriage would restore a wife's self sovereignty, as well as grant her
property rights); Sullivan, supra note 11, at 14 (arguing that feminists advocated for married women's property acts as a means to dismantle
coverture).
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n15. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 2; see also Ellen Carol DuBois, The Radicalism of the Woman Suffrage Movement: Notes toward the
Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Feminism, in Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights, supra note 10, at 30, 30-31.
n16. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 5-6.
n17. See Mary Becker, The Sixties Shift to Formal Equality and the Courts: An Argument for Pragmatism and Politics, 40 Wm. & Mary L. Rev.
209, 211 (1998); Linda Hirshman, Foreword: The Waning of the Middle Ages, 69 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 293, 294, 296 (1993) (arguing although the
American legal system employed the principles of liberalism to overturn medieval systems, medieval practices survived in the liberal regime);
Reva Siegel, Why Equal Protection No Longer Protects: The Evolving Forms of Status-Enforcing State Action, 49 Stan. L. Rev. 1111 (1997); see
also Angela P. Harris, Equality Trouble: Sameness and Difference in Twentieth-Century Race Law, 88 Cal. L. Rev. 1925 (2000) (arguing that laws
that establish formal racial equality do not result in racial justice).
n18. See supra note 9.
n19. See infra note 20.
n20. The ideal underlying coverture was that the husband became the wife's protector, covering her completely in most legal aspects. In return, the
wife was required to be subservient to the husband and to take his name. The creation of this legal union prohibited spouses from contracting with
each other or testifying in court in matters regarding the other. Since the husband was the sole embodiment of the union, the wife could not enter
into a contract, sue or be sued, or execute a will. Upon marriage, a woman lost all of her personal property, including her wages, the control of her
real property and all the proceeds from her land to her husband. Under the principle of curtesy, if the marriage produced a child, the husband
maintained a life interest in the wife's real estate after her death. Further, under coverture, the husband could deprive a wife of guardianship of their
children. See Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York 17-19, 20-24 (1982); see
also Sandra F. VanBurkleo, "Belonging to the World": Women's Rights and American Constitutional Culture 108-10 (2001); Carole Shammas, ReAssessing the Married Women's Property Acts, J. Women's Hist., Spring 1994, at 9, 10; Linda E. Speth, The Married Women's Property Acts,
1839-1865: Reform, Reactions, or Revolution?, in 2 Women and the Law: A Social Historical Perspective, 69, 69-70 (D. Kelly Weisberg ed.,
1982).
n21. See Stanley, supra note 14, at 199-217 (arguing that women's rights activists argued for property rights on the basis of contract law). They
argued that women were equal partners to the marriage contract and therefore needed laws that granted them ownership and control over their
bodies, labor, and wages. Id. See also Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation 52-55 (2000); Hendrik Hartog, Man and
Wife in America: A History (2000).
n22. See Alison M. Parker, The Case for Reform Antecedents for the Woman's Rights Movement, in Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage
Revisited, 21, 21-23 (Jean H. Baker ed., 2002).
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n23. Id. at 23. See also DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 21-40.
n24. See Ellen Carol DuBois, Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Bradwell, Minor, and Suffrage Militance in the 1870s, in Visible Women:
New Essays on American Activism 19, 21 (Nancy A. Hewitt & Suzanne Lebsock eds., 1993).
n25. See 2 History of Woman Suffrage 407-520 (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, & Matilda Joslyn Gage eds., 1881).
n26. See DuBois, supra note 24, at 23-26.
n27. Id. at 25.
n28. See Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 178 (1874) (holding that the right to vote was not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment);
Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130, 139 (1872) (holding that the right to work was not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment); see also
Norma Basch, Reconstructing Female Citizenship: Minor v. Happersett, in The Constitution, Law, and American Life: Critical Aspects of the
Nineteenth-Century Experience 52, 54-55 (Donald G. Nieman ed., 1992). See also DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 162-202
(describing the first split in the women's rights movement, which occurred in 1869, over whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment that granted
suffrage to African American men, but not to women). Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the dissenting faction and established an
independent woman suffrage movement. Id.
n29. See Rhode, supra note 11, at 14 (arguing that "many nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century feminists muted the rhetoric of natural rights in
favor of the rhetoric of natural roles" and emphasized women's moral superiority as grounds for the vote); DuBois, supra note 24, at 34 (describing
how the separate suffrage faction narrowed its efforts to the singular goal of securing woman suffrage in the years after the Minor decision and how
this allowed elitist and racist tendencies to spread within the movement); see also DuBois, The Limitations of Sisterhood, supra note 10, at 161
(describing the divisions of the suffrage movement in the late nineteenth century over issues of religion, sex, and family); DuBois, Feminism and
Suffrage, supra note 10, at 9 (describing how the prevailing view of woman suffragists separated their campaigns for the vote from other women's
rights issues).
n30. See Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: the Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 3, 55 (1990) (arguing that women took over the
temperance cause in the 1870s and characterized it as "a maternal struggle"). Bordin argues that by the end of the decade the Women's Christian
Temperance Union began to employ law reforms to further its cause of protecting women, children, and the sanctity of the home. Id. at 55. See
Jane E. Larson, "Even a Worm Will Turn at Last": Rape Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century America, 9 Yale J.L. & Human. 1, 3 (1997) (arguing
that the Women's Christian Temperance Union campaigns to raise the age of sexual consent should be understood as rape law reform campaigns).
For a discussion of the separate spheres ideology, see generally Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England,
1730-1835 (1977); Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America, 1
Signs 1 (1975); Barbara Welter, The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860, 18 Am. Q. 151 (1966). But see Linda K. Kerber, Separate Spheres,
Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History, 75 J. Am. Hist. 9, 9-13 (1988) (arguing that the practice of dividing the
women's rights movement into two camps, those who privileged women's status (difference) and those who privileged women's equality
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(sameness), renders a false dichotomy, obscuring the fluidity of those positions and the diversity of approaches within the feminist movement).
n31. See Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Alfreda M. Duster ed., 1970) (describing the law reform campaigns of Wells,
including anti-lynching and woman suffrage, and the racial discriminations she faced); Jane Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and
Protest in the Nineteenth Century 185-211 (1998) (describing Cary's legal education, her law reform efforts on behalf of both women and African
Americans, and the race divisions she encountered); Patricia A. Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930 (2001);
Margaret Walker, Foreword, in Dorothy Sterling, Black Foremothers: Three Lives, at vii, xi (2d ed. 1988) (arguing that black and white women
within the women's rights movement divided over issues of race).
n32. See Meredith Tax, The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917, at 45, 65-89 (1980) (describing the efforts
of the Working Women's Union in the 1870s to organize women workers and its campaign for the eight-hour day law). Tax also describes the
campaigns of the Illinois Woman's Alliance in the 1880s for compulsory education laws and the enforcement of factory inspection laws. Id. For a
discussion of women's gender discrimination within the labor movement in the nineteenth century before the Progressive Era, see generally Ileen
A. DeVault, United Apart: Gender and the Rise of Craft Unionism (2004). See also Susan Levine, Labor's True Woman: Carpet Weavers,
Industrialization, and Labor Reform in the Gilded Age (1984).
n33. See e.g., Bordin, supra note 30, at 6-61 (describing Frances Willard's activism for temperance and later woman suffrage); Kathryn Kish Sklar,
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900, at 216-22, 303 (1995) (describing Florence Kelley's
activism for labor reform and woman suffrage); see also Crusade for Justice, supra note 31, at 81-86, 345-47(describing Ida B. Wells' race activism
and woman suffrage).
n34. See infra Part II.
n35. See infra Part II.
n36. See infra Part II.
n37. See infra Part II.
n38. See infra Part II.
n39. See infra Part II.
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n40. See Rebecca Edwards, Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, J. for MultiMedia Hist. (2000)
(video review), http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol3/ourselves alone/ourselves-alone.html.
n41. See generally Ronald Chester, Unequal Access: Women Lawyers in a Changing America (1985); Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (2d
ed. 1993); Hedda Garza, Barred From the Bar: A History of Women in the Legal Profession (1996); Joan Hoff, Law, Gender, and Injustice: A
Legal History of U.S. Women (1991); Karen Berger Morello, The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America 1638 to the Present (1986);
Nancy T. Gilliam, A Professional Pioneer: Myra Bradwell's Fight to Practice Law, 5 Law & Hist. Rev. 105 (1987); Jill Norgren, Before It Was
Merely Difficult: Belva Lockwood's Life in Law and Politics, 23 J. Supreme Ct. Hist. 16 (1999); D. Kelly Weisberg, Barred from the Bar: Women
and Legal Education in the United States, 1870-1890, 28 J. Legal Educ. 485 (1977).
n42. See Virginia G. Drachman, Sisters in Law: Women Lawyers in Modern American History 9-36 (1998) [hereinafter Drachman, Sisters in
Law]; Virginia G. Drachman, Women Lawyers and the Origins of Professional Identity in America 1-38 (1993) [hereinafter Drachman, Women
Lawyers]; Felice Batlan, Engendering Legal History, 30 Law & Soc. Inquiry 823, 843 (2005); see also Jane M. Friedman, America's First Woman
Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell (1993); Sklar, supra note 33, at 248-49; Stanley, supra note 14, at 201-07 (describing the legislative
efforts for women's emancipation of Myra Bradwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Livermore, Frances Gage and Lucy Stone); VanBurkleo, supra
note 20, at 153-63; Barbara Allen Babcock, Book Review, Feminist Lawyers, 50 Stan. L. Rev. 1689, 1695-1702 (1998) (reviewing Drachman,
Sisters in Law, supra); Catherine B. Cleary, Lavinia Goodell, First Woman Lawyer in Wisconsin, 74 Wis. Mag. Hist. 243 (1991); Kenneth Walter
Mack, A Social History of Everyday Practice: Sadie T.M. Alexander and the Incorporation of Black Women into the American Legal Profession,
1925-1960, 87 Cornell L. Rev. 1405 (2002).
n43. See VanBurkleo, supra note 20, at 171; Parker, supra note 22, at 21.
n44. Myra Bradwell was an abolitionist, a women's rights activist, a legal scholar, a journalist, and a businesswoman. She founded, edited, and
published the Chicago Legal News, a weekly legal newspaper, from 1868 until her death in 1894. In her paper and through her organizational
activities, Bradwell advocated for a wide range of law reforms, including, especially, law reforms that would secure women's full citizenship rights,
privileges, and obligations. For biographical assessments of Bradwell, see Friedman, supra note 42; Caroline K. Goddard, Bradwell, Myra Colby,
in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary 112, 112-14 (Rima Lunin Schultz et al. eds., 2001); Dorothy Thomas,
Bradwell, Myra Colby, in 1 Notable American Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary 223-25 (Edward T. James et al. eds., 1971).
n45. For accounts of Bradwell's case, see Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 19-25; Friedman, supra note 42, at 17-33; Garza, supra note
41, at 32-39; Herman Kogan, The First Century: The Chicago Bar Association, 1874-1974, at 24-29 (1974); Morello, supra note 41, at 13-21;
Herman Kogan, Myra Bradwell: Crusader at Law, 3 Chi. Hist. 132 (1974); Gilliam, supra note 41; Frances Olsen, From False Paternalism to False
Equality: Judicial Assaults on Feminist Community, Illinois 1869-1895, 84 Mich. L. Rev. 1518 (1986).
n46. See generally William M. Wiecek, The Lost World of Classical Legal Thought: Law and Ideology in America, 1886-1937, at 191-97 (1998).
n47. See Margaret E. Keck & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics 1-37 (1998).
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n48. Id. at 2.
n49. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the second major international fair held in the United States, was intended to commemorate
Columbus's arrival in the "new world." Chicago won a rigorous competition to host the exposition. Contemporary observers estimated that twentyseven million people attended the fair, half of them coming from other countries. See Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago
and the Making of America 378-80, 488 (1997).
n50. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 10-11; Rogers M. Smith, Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America, 87 Am.
Pol. Sci. Rev. 549, 549 (1993) (explaining that throughout American political history, liberal reforms co-exist with, rather than replace, America's
illiberal traditions).
n51. Harris, supra note 17, at 1927-28 (arguing that anti-discrimination laws fail to eliminate racism and its practices).
n52. See Stanley, supra note 14, at 201-07; see also Cott, supra note 10, at 16-17.
n53. See supra note 21.
n54. See supra note 20.
n55. Basch, supra note 20, at 118; Stanley, supra note 14, at 175-76.
n56. See infra note 164.
n57. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 69; Michael B. Dougan, The Arkansas Married Woman's Property Law, 46 Ark. Hist. Q. 3 (1987).
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n58. See Hoff, supra note 41, at 127-35, 377-82; see also Carole Shammas, Re-Assessing the Married Women's Property Acts, 6 J. Women's Hist.
11 (1994).
n59. See Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law 208-11 (2d ed. 1985) (arguing reformers' desire to provide relief to debtors in order
to foster economic growth was the primary motivation for the acts); see also Basch, supra 20, at 123-25; Peggy A. Rabkin, Fathers to Daughters:
The Legal Foundations of Female Emancipation 106-07 (1980); Sullivan, supra note 11, at 21-44 (arguing the acts were part of the larger
codification movement); Shammas, supra note 58, at 11, 24 (arguing the motivations for the acts included a desire to stabilize the volatile economy
of the 1830s that had spurred a rise in bankruptcies; a desire to shield the wife's pre-marital property; especially patrimony, from a husband's
creditors; and a desire to ameliorate the escalating litigation in the chancery courts regarding women's separate estates).
The relationship between women's rights activists and the MWPA has generated the greatest debate among scholars. For studies that argue
the pre-1850 statutes were passed without the influence of any organized women's rights agitation, see Friedman, supra note 42, at 210; Kermit L.
Hall, The Magic Mirror: Law in American History 158 (1989). See generally Rabkin, supra, at 106-107 (arguing the New York acts actually
motivated the women's rights movement, rather than the other way around); Megan Benson, Fisher v. Allen: The Southern Origins of the Married
Women's Property Acts, 6 J. S. Legal Hist. 97 (1998).
n60. See infra notes 61-65.
n61. See Basch, supra note 20, at 119-20 (arguing in the 1830s, a handful of activists joined the fight and publicly spoke out for women's rights.
These included Sarah Grimke, Ernestine Rose, and Thomas Herttell, all of whom argued for women's equality, and Sarah Hale, who argued for
women's rights based on women's moral superiority); Ginzberg, supra note 8, at 200-01 (arguing in the 1820s, many of the men and women
characterized as freethinkers, especially Fanny Wright and Robert Owen, advocated for women's citizenship rights);.
n62. See Basch, supra note 20, at 115.
n63. See Judge Thomas Herttell, Remarks on the Bill to Restore to Married Women "The Right of Property," as Guaranteed by the Constitution of
the United States (1837), available at http://www.pinn.net/sunshine/book-sum/herttell3.html; see also Yuri Suhl, Ernestine L. Rose: Women's
Rights Pioneer (2d ed. 1990).
n64. See Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838) (comprised of fifteen letters Sarah M. Grimke wrote to Mary S.
Parker, President of the Boston Female anti-Slavery Society advocating rights for women). The letters are republished in The Public Years of Sarah
and Angelina Grimke: Selected Writings 1835-1839 (Larry Ceplair ed., 1989). See also Basch, supra note 20, at 117-20; E. P. Hurlbut, Essays on
Human Rights and Their Political Guaranties 144-72 (1845) (arguing for women's rights as human rights); McFadden, supra note 8, at 20; Rabkin,
supra note 59, at 106-07; Marion Kirkland Reid, A Plea for Women (1843) (arguing for women's right to financial independence and suffrage in
Great Britain. The book was also popular in America, with five editions published in the U.S. between 1847 and 1852.); 1 The Selected Papers of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840 to 1866, at 76 n.4 (Ann D. Gordon ed., 1997), available at
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html#senf4 [hereinafter Selected Papers].
n65. See Basch, supra note 20, at 136-38.
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n66. See Declaration, supra note 12, at 76-81.
n67. See id.; Selected Papers, supra note 64, at 76 n.4.
n68. See Basch, supra note 20, at 137.
n69. See Paulina Wright Davis, Opening Address at the 1850 Woman's Rights Convention at Worcester, Mass., (Oct. 23, 1850) (available at
http://www.wwhp.org/Resources/Womans Rights/proceedings.html#resolutions%20unanimously%20adopted).
n70. See Eugene H. Roseboom, Gage, Frances Dana Barker, in 2 Notable American Women, supra note 44, at 2, 2-4; Elizabeth B. Warbasse,
Cutler, Hanna Maria Conant Tracy, in 1 Notable American Women, supra note 44, at 426, 426-27.
n71. 3 History of Woman Suffrage 560 (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, & Matilda Joslyn Gage eds., 1886).
n72. Id. One of these articles was written by Catharine V. Waite. Id. at 561.
n73. Id. Cutler and Gage had been leaders in the woman's rights movement in Ohio until 1852 when Hannah Tracy married Samuel Cutler and
moved to Illinois. See Warbasse, supra note 70, at 426-27.
n74. See 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 561-62.
n75. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 22-23.
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n76. VanBurkleo, supra note 20, at 81.
n77. Id. at 93; Basch, supra note 20, at 175, 181-89 (documenting the speeches of women's rights activists and their demands for law reform during
the 1850s). The activists included Frances Gage, Lucy Stone, Wendell Phillips, Antoinette Brown, Lucretia Mott, Ernestine Rose, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Amelia Bloomer. Id. See also DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 29; Nell Irvin Painter, Voices of
Suffrage: Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage, in Votes for Women, supra note 22, at 42, 42-55
(arguing that some African American women advocated for women's rights before the Civil War, including most prominently Sojourner Truth).
n78. Frances Gage was an abolitionist and a women's rights activist. See Roseboom, supra note 70, at 2-4.
n79. Warbasse, supra note 70, at 426-27.
n80. See 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 561-62; Warbasse, supra note 70, at 426-27.
n81. 1861 Ill. Laws 143. See also 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 561.
n82. See 1861 Ill. Laws 143; 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 561-62 (explaining how Cutler drafted the bill). Although an
unnamed state legislator had promised that he would act on this petition, Cutler undertook the task when the legislator failed to act. Id. After
researching the form and procedure of drafting a bill at the state library, Cutler authored a bill that gave married women the right to maintain as her
sole and separate property, outside the control or interference of her husband, all property that she owned at the time of marriage or acquired during
marriage. Id.
n83. See Talk with the Legislature, Chi. Legal News, Feb. 27, 1869, at 172 ; Husband and Wife-Property of Latter under Law of 1861, Chi. Legal
News, Oct. 17, 1868, at 22 (specifying the inequalities that persisted in the Illinois property laws).
n84. See 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 561-62.
n85. Id. at 562 (explaining Cutler also proposed a bill that granted a widow, with an estate valued at $ 5000 or less, the right to maintain her
husband's property after his death). This was intended to assist women whose husbands died in battle by allowing them to continue to operate the
family estate to care for themselves and their children. Id.
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n86. Cf. Faye Dudden, New York Strategy: The New York Woman's Movement and the Civil War, in Votes for Women, supra note 22, at 56, 56
(arguing that women's rights activism in New York continued during the Civil War).
n87. See Eleanor Flexner & Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States 101-02 (enlarged ed.
1996).
n88. See Mary A. Livermore, My Story of the War: A Woman's Narrative of Four Years Personal Experience 411-56, 455 (1887); Bessie Louise
Pierce, A History of Chicago Volume II: From Town to City 1848-1871, at 453, 455 (1940).
n89. See Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 100-01; Thomas, supra note 44, at 223-24.
n90. See Steven M. Buechler, The Transformation of the Woman Suffrage Movement: The Case of Illinois, 1850-1920, at 59 (1986).
n91. See Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 136-37; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 59; DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10,
at 181.
n92. See Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History 285 (1997); see also Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note
87, at 136-37.
n93. See Women in Iowa, Chi. Legal News, Dec. 25, 1869, at 100 (Bradwell asserts her interpretation on the amendments).
n94. See Basch, supra note 28, at 52-53.
n95. See Friedman, supra note 42, at 41-42.
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n96. See The Chicago Legal News, in 6 Industrial Chicago: The Bench and Bar 642, 642 (1896). Because the laws of coverture still applied,
Bradwell petitioned the Illinois legislature for a special charter that allowed her to enter into contracts and own her own business. Id. Under the
authority of her charter, Bradwell founded the Chicago Legal News, the city's only weekly legal newspaper. Id. She and her husband then
established a publishing company that printed and published the paper. Id.
n97. Women in Iowa, supra note 93.
n98. See Buechler, supra note 90, at 76-77 (describing the similarities in mission of The Revolution and The Woman's Journal and Mary
Livermore's The Agitator, which merged with The Women's Journal).
n99. See Prospectus, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 3, 1868, at 1.
n100. See The Chicago Legal News, supra note 96, at 642.
n101. See Goddard, supra note 44, at 112-14.
n102. Bradwell argued that a woman "has a right to think and act as an individual." Woman's Right to Vote, Chi. Legal News, July 7, 1868, at 45.
n103. Married Women's Separate Property Under Act of 1861, Chi. Legal News, Nov.13, 1869, at 53.
n104. See id.
n105. See Elijah v. Taylor, 37 Ill. 247, 249 (1865).
n106. Emerson v. Clayton, 32 Ill. 493, 497 (1863).
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n107. Id. at 496.
n108. Cole v. Van Riper, 44 Ill. 58, 64 (1867).
n109. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 101 (arguing that the same phenomenon occurred in other states). The courts did not interpret the statutes as
an abolishment of coverture, rather they collaborated with their state legislatures to reconcile the tensions created by married women's property
rights and coverture. Id.
n110. Married Women's Separate Property Under Act of 1861, supra note 103.
n111. See Bear v. Hays, 36 Ill. 280, 281 (1865); see also Farrell v. Patterson, 43 Ill. 52, 58 (1867).
n112. See Cole, 44 Ill. at 66.
n113. See Carpenter v. Mitchell, 50 Ill. 470, 471-72 (1869).
n114. Id. at 474.
n115. See Connor v. Berry, 46 Ill. 370, 372 (1868).
n116. See Custody of Children, Chi. Legal News, Apr. 29, 1871, at 243; Talk with the Legislature, supra note 83; see also Custody of Children in
Illinois, Chi. Legal News, May 18, 1872, at 252; The Legal Existence of the Wife, Chi. Legal News, Jan. 25, 1873, at 211.
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n117. Laws Relating to Women, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 31, 1868, at 37.
n118. Id.
n119. See Married Woman's Property, Chi. Legal News, Nov. 14, 1868, at 53; Letter to the Editor, The Property Rights of Married Women, Chi.
Legal News, Dec. 12, 1868, at 85.
n120. 1869 Ill. Laws 255.
n121. Id.
n122. Id.
n123. See id.
n124. Married Woman's Property, supra note 119.
n125. Married Women's Separate Property Under Act of 1861, Chi. Legal News, Nov. 27, 1869, at 68.
n126. Bradwell asserted that if a "judgment be recovered against her... [a married woman's] separate property [should] be sold to satisfy it." Id.
n127. 68 Ill. Laws 576, 576-78 (1874).
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n128. See Husband and Wife, Chi. Legal News, Jan. 31, 1874, at 153.
n129. See infra Parts I.B, II.
n130. See infra Parts I.B, II.
n131. See infra Parts I.B, II.
n132. See infra Parts I.B, II.
n133. Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 136-37.
n134. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 53-55.
n135. See id. at 189-202.
n136. See id. at 162-202; Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 145-48.
n137. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 18-20.
n138. See id. at 162-202; Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 145-48.
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n139. See infra Part II.
n140. See infra Part II; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 62-64 (summarizing Bradwell's leadership role in the women's rights movement and
her focus on women's legal rights).
n141. See Chicago Woman Suffrage Convention, Chi. Legal News, Feb. 20 1869, at 164.
n142. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States 184 (2000). See also Buechler, supra note
90, at 103.
n143. See Janet Cornelius, Constitution Making in Illinois, 1818-1970, at 56-64 (1972).
n144. See The Women's Association, Chi. Trib., June 19, 1868, at 1 (documenting its founding and its goal: "to increase the social relations of
women and mankind, and to advocate anything that will, in any way, tend to promote the welfare of both sexes - the female sex especially"); see
also Lana Ruegamer, Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, in Women Building Chicago, supra note 44, at 512, 512-514 (documenting the name change
of the Woman's Association to the Chicago Sorosis).
n145. See Buechler, supra note 90, at 68.
n146. Id. at 71.
n147. See id. at 104-05.
n148. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 163-64; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 69-76.
n149. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 163-64; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 69-76.
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n150. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 163-64; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 69-76.
n151. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 164 (arguing that although there was a split in the suffrage movement, the two rival
organizations advanced cause of woman suffrage).
n152. See Buechler, supra note 90, at 75; see also 3 History of Woman Suffrage, supra note 71, at 564-65.
n153. Woman's Suffrage, Chi. Trib., Jan. 5, 1870, at 4 (citing and discussing the resolution the IWSA passed regarding its refusal to join either the
AWSA or the NWSA: "Resolved, That while we sympathize with the objects had in view in the formation of the National Women Suffrage
Associations formed in Cleveland and New York, we will not become auxiliary to either, until the difficulties between the two are settled."). See
also Chicago Woman Suffrage Convention, supra note 141.
n154. See Woman's Kingdom, Chi. Inter Ocean, May 20, 1882 (published a reprint of Judge Waite's 1869 convention speech).
n155. See The Women, Chi. Trib., Feb. 13, 1869, at 4.
n156. Buechler, supra note 90, at 69-73; Chicago Woman Suffrage Convention, supra note 141.
n157. See supra note 59; see also infra Part II.
n158. See supra note 59; see also infra Part II.
n159. See Grace H. Harte, The Battle for the Right of Women to Practice Law, 33 Women Law. J. 141, 145 (1947) (describing the historical fight
for women to be lawyers and arguing that their motivation for the fight was that "the doors of the temple of justice must be opened to women").
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n160. See id. at 141-45.
n161. See infra Parts II, III.
n162. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 107.
n163. See infra Part II.A; see also Gilliam, supra note 41, at 112 (arguing that Bradwell's reasoning in her case deviated from conventional judicial
reasoning).
n164. Arabella Mansfield applied for her law license in Iowa on June 15, 1869. See Dorothy Thomas, Arabella Mansfield, in 2 Notable American
Women, supra note 44, at at 492, 493. Myra Bradwell applied for her law license in Illinois in September 1869. See A Woman Cannot Practice
Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, Chi. Legal News, Feb. 5, 1870, at 145. Lemma Barkaloo and Phoebe Couzins gained admission to the law
school at Washington University in St. Louis, after Barkaloo was initially denied admission to the law school at Columbia University. African
American Mary Ann Shadd Carey was admitted to Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. Sarah Kilgore and Ada Kepley were
admitted to the University of Chicago Law School. Also in their class at the University of Chicago was Richard A. Dawson, the first African
American man admitted to the law school. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 37, 45; Morello, supra note 41, at 46-53; Ellen A.
Martin, Admission of Women to the Bar, 1 Chi. L. Times 76, 76, 78 (1887); Lelia J. Robinson, Women Lawyers in the United States, 2 Green Bag
10, 13, 17, 28 (1890).
n165. See Barbara Allen Babcock, Foreword: A Real Revolution, 49 U. Kan. L. Rev. 719, 726 (2001) (arguing that nearly all of the first women
lawyers were feminists and that they became lawyers to further the women's rights movement); cf. Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 5051 (arguing that the motivations of the first generation of women lawyers to enter the profession were diverse, though Drachman does assert that
some were motivated by the desire to use the law to advance women's rights).
n166. See Babcock, supra note 42, at 1699 (arguing that when the individual efforts of the first women lawyers are considered together, they reveal
a "larger movement").
n167. See Robinson, supra note 164, at 14. See generally infra Part II.
n168. See I The Bench and Bar of Illinois 277 (John M. Palmer ed., 1899).
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N169. See Goddard, supra note 44, at 112-14.
n170. See Robert W. Gordon, Legal Thought and Legal Practice in the Age of American Enterprise 1870-1920, in Professions and Professional
Ideologies in America 70, 72, 89-91 (Gerald L. Geison ed., 1983); see also Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle-Class
and the Development of Higher Education in America 86-88 (1976); Bruce A. Kimball, The "True Professional Ideal" in America: A History 186,
192-93, 245-50 (1992); The Professions in American History 1 (Hathan O. Hatch ed., 1988).
n171. See Samuel Haber, The Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750-1900, at 210 (1991). From the Revolution to
1869, the American legal profession had been exclusively male in membership and character. The characteristics of a lawyer, as delineated by
Michael Grossberg, were "camaraderie, competitiveness, physical courage, practicality, personal trust, oratorical prowess, entrepreneurial skill, and
an aversion to bookishness[,]" all traits were associated with masculinity in the nineteenth century. Michael Grossberg, Institutionalizing
Masculinity: The Law as a Masculine Profession, in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America 133, 137 (Mark C.
Carnes & Clyde Griffen eds., 1990).
n172. See Hall, supra note 59, at 218-21.
n173. See Jerold S. Auerbach, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America 96, 100 (1976).
n174. Id. at 81, 88, 98, 295.
n175. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 43-51; Friedman, supra note 59, at 620; Morello, supra note 41, at 39-87.
n176. See Friedman, supra note 59, at 634.
n177. U.S. Const. amend. XIV. See Basch, supra note 28, at 53; Dubois, supra note 24, at 21.
n178. Wiecek, supra note 46, at 191.
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n179. Id. at 3.
n180. Id. at 175, 177-80. See also Hall, supra note 59, at 223; Morton J. Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law 1870-1960: The Crisis of
Legal Orthodoxy 3, 109-42 (1992); Gordon, supra note 170, at 70-71 (arguing that elite lawyers during this time fought against an instrumental
approach to law and advocated instead a scientific, formalist approach).
n181. See Hall, supra note 59, at 223; Horowitz, supra note 180, at 109-10.
n182. See Horowitz, supra note 180, at 3, 109-42; Wiecek, supra note 46, at 177-80.
n183. Wiecek, supra note 46, at 191-93.
n184. See Roscoe Pound, Mechanical Jurisprudence, 8 Colum. L. Rev. 605, 609 (1908).
n185. See id. at 605, 609; see also Wiecek, supra note 46, at 191-93. See generally Roscoe Pound, The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence, 19
Green Bag 607 (1907).
n186. See Adam Winkler, A Revolution Too Soon: Woman Suffragists and the "Living Constitution," 76 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1456, 1458 (2001).
n187. See J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer 1844-1944, at 451-55 (1993).
n188. See Thomas, supra note 164, at 493.
n189. See id.
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n190. Id.; Louis A. Haselmayer, Belle A. Mansfield, 55 Women Law. J. 46, 46 (1969).
n191. See Thomas, supra note 164, at 493.
n192. See Martin, supra note 164, at 76.
n193. Id. at 77. See also Thomas, supra note 164, at 493; A Married Woman Admitted to the Bar in Iowa, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 16, 1869, at 20.
n194. Pound, The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence, supra note 185, at 611.
n195. Haselmayer, supra note 190, at 47.
n196. Id.; Thomas, supra note 164, at 493.
n197. Haselmayer, supra note 190, at 47.
n198. A Married Woman Admitted to the Bar in Iowa, supra note 193.
n199. See Woman as Lawyer, Revolution, July 8, 1869, at 10.
n200. The XIV Amendment and Our Case, Chi. Legal News, Apr. 19, 1873, at 354 .
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n201. See A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n202. See id.
n203. See id.
n204. See id.
n205. See id.
n206. Id.
n207. Id.
n208. See id.
n209. Id.
n210. See id.
n211. Id.; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 113-14.
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n212. See A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n213. See id.
n214. See Winkler, supra note 186, at 1458; see also Gilliam, supra note 41, at 112 (describing Bradwell's appeal for a judicial interpretation that
employed the principles of equity).
n215. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1524.
n216. A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n217. See id.
n218. See id.
n219. Id.
n220. See Goddard, supra note 44, at 112-14; I The Bench and Bar of Illinois, supra note 168, at 278-79.
n221. See A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n222. See DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, supra note 10, at 180-86 (describing how Bradwell met with Anthony and Stanton in Chicago in both
February, when they participated in the Illinois Woman Suffrage conference). Bradwell also attended the Equal Rights Association meeting in May
1869 in New York where Anthony and Stanton argued against supporting the Fifteenth Amendment. Id. at 186. See also 3 History of Woman
Suffrage, supra note 71, at 569-70 (describing how Bradwell and Stanton went to Springfield, Illinois in February 1869 after the Chicago
convention as part of a committee to lobby the Illinois legislature to pass an earning law for married women).
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n223. See Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Catharine Van Valkenburg Waite: Lawyer, (unpublished biographical sketch, on file with Grace H. Harte,
Series III of the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1890-1945, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University).
n224. See DuBois, supra note 24, at 21-22.
n225. See id. at 23.
n226. See id.
n227. See A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n228. See id.
n229. See id.
n230. See id.
n231. Id.
n232. Id.
n233. See id.
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n234. See id.
n235. Gilliam, supra note 41, at 115.
n236. See Linda K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship 87-117 (1998).
n237. See In re Bradwell, 55 Ill. 535 (1869).
n238. See id. at 535-42.
n239. A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n240. See id.
n241. Id. See also Olsen, supra note 45, at 1524-25.
n242. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1524-25.
n243. A Woman Cannot Practice Law or Hold any Office in Illinois, supra note 164.
n244. Id.
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n245. See id.
n246. Id.
n247. The XIV Amendment and Our Case, supra note 200.
n248. Gilliam, supra note 41, at 116.
n249. See id.
n250. Supreme Court of the United States, Chi. Legal News, Jan. 20, 1872, at 108.
n251. Id.
n252. Id.
n253. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 120; Supreme Court of the United States, supra note 250.
n254. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 120.
n255. See Hoff, supra note 41, at 168; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 120.
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n256. See Supreme Court of the United States, supra note 250; see also Gilliam, supra note 41, at 119 (suggesting that Bradwell did not even see
Carpenter's brief until after he submitted it).
n257. See Ellen Carol DuBois, Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 18201878, in Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights, supra note 10, at 81, 100-05.
n258. See Matilda Joslyn Gage to Editor, Leavenworth Times (Kansas), July 3, 1873, available at http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/sbatrial.html.
n259. Id.
n260. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 125-26; see also Smith, supra note 92, at 339-41.
n261. Richard L. Aynes, Bradwell v. Illinois: Chief Justice Chase's Dissent and the "Sphere of Women's Work," 59 La. L. Rev. 521, 525 (1999);
DuBois, Taking the Law into Our Own Hands, supra note 24, at 32.
n262. Aynes, supra note 261, at 521-25; DuBois, supra note 24, at 32; Olsen, supra note 45, at 1526-27.
n263. See generally Richard L. Aynes, Constricting the Law of Freedom: Justice Miller, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Slaughter-House
Cases, 70 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 627 (1994); Michael Kent Curtis, Resurrecting the Privileges or Immunities Clause and Revising the Slaughter-House
Cases Without Exhuming Lochner: Individual Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, 38 B.C. L. Rev. 1 (1996).
n264. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1525-26; see also Aynes, supra note 261, at 524-25; DuBois, supra note 24, at 32.
n265. See William J. Novak, The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America 230 (1996).
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n266. See Ronald M. Labbe & Jonathan Lurie, The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment 185-87
(2003).
n267. Id. See also Aynes, supra note 261, at 524-25; DuBois, supra note 24, at 32; Olsen, supra note 45, at 1525-26.
n268. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 118.
n269. See Rogers M. Smith, "One United People": Second-Class Female Citizenship and the American Quest for Community, 1 Yale J.L. &
Human. 229, 260 (1989).
n270. E. Bruce Thompson, Matthew Hale Carpenter, Webster of the West 100-01 (1954).
n271. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 125.
n272. See The Butchers' Benevolent Ass'n v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing & Slaughter-House Co. (The Slaughter-House Cases), 83
U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1872).
n273. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 125.
n274. See Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130, 139 (1872); see also Olsen, supra note 45, at 1527.
n275. Bradwell, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 139.
n276. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1525-26; see also Hoff, supra note 41, at 165; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 122; Nadine Taub & Elizabeth M.
Schneider, Women's Subordination and the Role of Law, in The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique 328, 339-41 (David Kairys, ed., 1998).
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n277. See Bradwell, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 137-38.
n278. See id. at 140-42; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 126-27; Olsen, supra note 45, at 1528-29.
n279. See Bradwell, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 140-41; see also Gilliam, supra note 41, at 126-27.
N280. The Butchers' Benevolent Ass'n v. The Crescent City Live-Stock Landing & Slaughter-House Co. (The Slaughter-House Cases), 83 U.S.
(16 Wall.) 36, 506 (1872) (Bradley, J., dissenting).
n281. See Bradwell, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 140-42; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 126-27; Olsen, supra note 45, at 1528; Taub & Schneider, supra note
276, at 339-42.
n282. See Bradwell, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 141; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 127.
n283. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 24.
n284. See Sullivan, supra note 11, at 139 (arguing that Bradley's concurrence overstated the prejudice against women by 1873).
n285. See Ernest Sutherland Bates, The Story of the Supreme Court 192-93 (1936); Gilliam, supra note 41, at 125.
n286. See Bates, supra note 285, at 192-93; Gilliam, supra note 41, at 125.
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n287. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 126.
n288. See infra notes 289-99.
n289. See Grossberg, supra note 171, at 137 (describing the male make-up and character of the legal profession).
n290. See infra Part III.A.
n291. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1529-31.
n292. See Morello, supra note 41, at 49. For information on Alta Hulett, see Jon W. Lundin, Rockford: An Illustrated History 17 (1989); 6 Charles
D. Mosher, Centennial Historical Albums of Biographies of the Chicago Bar 49 (1876); Gwen Hoerr McNamee, Hulett, Alta May, in Women
Building Chicago 1790-1990, supra note 44, at 412, 412-14; Charlotte Adelman, A History of Women Lawyers, Ill. B.J., May 1986, at 424, 425; E.
Boyton, Woman's Kingdom, Chi. Inter Ocean, Mar. 31, 1877, at 6.
n293. Morello, supra note 41, at 49; McNamee, supra note 292, at 412-14.
n294. See 3 History of Woman Suffrage , supra note 71, at 572-75 (describing that Hulett, like Bradwell read law in a law office and Ada Kepley
attended University of Chicago law school); Morello, supra note 41, at 49.
n295. The first University of Chicago Law School was established in 1859. In response to the pressure of Myra Bradwell, the law department
agreed to admit women. In 1870 Ada Kepley was the law school's first woman graduate and the first woman to graduate from any law school in the
country. In 1873 that law school merged with Northwestern University's newly formed law school and took the name "The Union College of Law
of the Chicago University and the Northwestern University." The law school continued to admit women and became well known for its support of
women in the profession. In 1891, the merger between the two universities ended and the Union College of Law became Northwestern University
Law School. The University of Chicago did not open its own law school again until 1902. Frank Ellsworth, Law on the Midway: The Founding of
the University of Chicago Law School 12-14, 17, 127 (1977); Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, A History of the University of Chicago 14-21
(1916); Robinson, supra note 164, at 10, 13-14.
n296. See Commencement Exercises of the University of Chicago, Chi. Legal News, July 2, 1870, at 320 (explaining that Kepley, together with
Richard A. Dawson, who simultaneously became the first black man to earn a law degree in Illinois, graduated from the University of Chicago Law
Department in a class that included twenty-seven white men). Dawson, along with the white men in their class who passed the bar examination,
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received his law license becoming the second African American admitted to the Illinois bar. Id.
n297. See id.
n298. See id.
n299. Morello, supra note 41, at 49; Peggy Pulliam, Effingham's Fighting Female, in Effingham County Illinois - Past and Present 299, 300 (Hilda
Engbring Feldhake ed., 1968).
n300. See Commencement Exercises of the University of Chicago, supra note 296; see also The Constitutional Convention, Chi. Legal News, Jan.
15, 1870, at 124.
n301. See The Constitutional Convention, supra note 300; see also Summary of Events: Illinois, 5 Am. L. Rev. 167, 168 (1870).
n302. See The Constitutional Convention, supra note 300.
n303. See Mrs. Kepley in Judge Decius' Court, Chi. Legal News, Nov. 19, 1870, at 60.
n304. Id.
n305. Id.
n306. Id.
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n307. See id.; see also Morello, supra note 41, at 49-50.
n308. See Olsen, supra note 45, at 1529; see also Gilliam, supra note 41, at 128.
n309. Public Laws Of The State of Illinois 578 (1872).
n310. See The Chicago Legal News, supra note 96, at 642-44 (describing the News had a national readership and was recognized by both the
United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and by the United States Circuit Court as an authority in the publication of court
decisions and legal notifications); Shall Women have the Legal Right to Follow any Trade, Business or Profession?, Chi. Legal News. Dec. 16,
1871, at 68.
n311. See Miss Alta M. Hulett's Lecture, Rockford J., Dec. 2, 1871, at 2; Miss Alta M. Hulett's Lecture, Rockford Reg., Dec. 2, 1871, at 1; Miss
Hulett's Lecture, Rockford Gazette, Nov. 30, 1871, at 1.
n312. Miss Hulett's Lecture, supra note 311.
n313. See id.
n314. See Alta M. Hulett (unpublished biographical sketch, on file with Grace H. Harte, Series III of the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 18901945, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University).
n315. Public Laws Of The State of Illinois 578 (1872).
n316. See Kerber, supra note 236, at 262-63.
n317. See id. at 244, 263.
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n318. See generally Holly J. McCammon et al., Becoming Full Citizens: The U.S. Women's Jury Rights Campaigns, the Pace of Reform, and
Strategic Adaptation, 113 Am. J. Soc. 1104, 1111 (2008); Gretchen Ritter, Jury Service and Women's Citizenship before and after the Nineteenth
Amendment, 20 Law & Hist. Rev. 479, 481 (2002).
n319. See Harte, supra note 159, at 145.
n320. Protective Agency for Women and Children, Seventh Annual Report 8 (1893) (explaining Attorney Charlotte Holt later explicitly articulated
the importance of having women as lawyers, judges, and observers in the courtroom).
n321. See Ill. Rev. Stat. ch. 78,§§1, 25 (1939).
n322. See Liberty of Pursuit Triumphant in Illinois, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 23, 1872, at 245.
n323. See Boyton, supra note 292; John M. Palmer, A Married Woman Cannot be Appointed a Notary in Illinois, Chi. Legal News, Jan. 1, 1870, at
109.
n324. See Admission to the Bar, 6 Am. L. Rev. 369, 369 (1871).
n325. See Gilliam, supra note 41, at 128.
n326. See Funeral of Myra Bradwell, Chi. Legal News, Feb. 24, 1894, at 208.
n327. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 236.
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n328. See id.
n329. See Martin, supra note 164, at 79.
n330. See Boyton, supra note 292, at 6; Students Admitted to the Bar in the Supreme Court, Chi. Trib., June 7, 1873, at 3.
n331. See Friedman, supra note 42, at 134; see also Martin, supra note 164, at 79.
n332. Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 6.
n333. See generally Goddard, supra note 44, at 112-14.
n334. See Colored Jurors, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 8, 1870, at 12.
n335. See id.
n336. Women as Citizens and Jurors, Chi. Legal News, Aug. 26, 1871, at 381.
n337. See infra note 341.
n338. See generally Smith, Jr., supra note 187.
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n339. See Dorothy Thomas, Ray, Charlotte E., in 2 Notable American Women, supra note 44, at 121, 121; see also A Woman Admitted to the Bar
in Missouri, Chi. Legal News, Apr. 3, 1870, at 212 (announcing the admission of Lemma Barkalow to the Missouri bar); Women Admitted to the
Bar in Utah, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 5, 1872, at 17 (describing the admission of Phoebe Couzins and Georgie Snow to the Utah bar); Women As
Lawyers in Maine, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 26, 1872, at 54 (describing the admission of Clara Hapgood Nash to the Maine bar); Women Lawyers,
Chi. Legal News, June 25, 1881, at 340 (discussing the admission of Nettie Cronise Lutes and her sister Florence Cronise to the Ohio bar).
n340. See, e.g., A Woman Cannot Be Admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts, Chi. Legal News, Nov. 12, 1881, at 69 (detailing Leila Robinson's
application, arguments, and denial to the Massachusetts bar); A Woman Cannot Practice Law in Minnesota, Chi. Legal News, Oct. 14, 1876, at 31
(describing the Minnesota court's denial of Martha Angle Dorsett's application to practice law); see also A Woman Refused Admission to the Bar in
Pa., Chi. Legal News, Mar. 15, 1884, at 215 (discussing Carrie Kilgore's application and denial to the Pennsylvania court and Judge Pierce's
dissent).
n341. See, e.g., Mrs. Lockwood's Case, Chi. Legal News, Nov. 16, 1878, at 70 (explaining Lockwood wrote a letter to Bradwell pledging to finish
the fight Bradwell started to allow women to practice law and asking for her help in her application to practice law in Maryland). Bradwell
published Lockwood's letter and the details of her case and committed to support her. Id. See infra for Bradwell's support of Goodell's application
to practice law in Wisconsin and Lockwood's application to practice law before the United States Supreme Court.
n342. See supra notes 183-86.
n343. Can a Woman Practice Law in Wisconsin?, Chi. Legal News, Jan. 1, 1876, at 116.
n344. Id.
n345. See id.
n346. See id.
n347. See Cleary, supra note 42, at 243.
n348. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 22-23.
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n349. Can a Woman Practice Law in Wisconsin?, supra note 343.
n350. See id.
n351. See Miss Goodell's Application Denied, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 4, 1876, at 191 (reprinting the Wisconsin State Journal article); see also Mr.
Mosness on Judge Ryan's Opinion, Chi. Legal News, May 13, 1876, at 271 (printing letter by Mosness to Bradwell arguing that the Chief Justice of
the Wisconsin court's "prejudice against women in the practice of law" influenced him to "disregard the plain provision of the statute").
n352. See In re Goodell, 39 Wis. 232, 244-45 (1875); see also Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 11, 1876, at 196.
n353. Cleary, supra note 42, at 261 (citation omitted).
n354. Miss Goodell's Application Denied, supra note 351. In 1877 with the support of every lawyer in her county, Goodell secured a law that
prohibited sex as ground for denying a law license. See Cleary, supra note 42, at 265.
n355. See Shall Women Be Admitted to Practice Law in the Federal Courts?, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 23, 1878, at 215; Shall Women Be Admitted
to the Bar?, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 30, 1878, at 224; The Admission of Women to the Bar, Chi. Legal News, Feb.15, 1879, at 180; Women as
Lawyers, Chi. Legal News, May 11, 1878, at 271; Women's Right to Practice in the U.S. Courts, Chi. Legal News, Feb. 10, 1877, at 169.
n356. See Morello, supra note 41, at 31, 33.
n357. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 27; 6 Charles Fairman, Reconstruction and Reunion 1864-88 Part One, at 1366 (1971);
Morello, supra note 41, at 33.; see also Jill Norgren, Before it Was Merely Difficult: Belva Lockwood's Life in Law and Politics, 23 J. Supreme Ct.
Hist. 16, 29 (1999); Lee Ann Potter, A Bill to Relieve Certain Legal Disabilities of Women, Soc. Educ., Mar. 2002, at 117, 119.
n358. Frances A. Cook, Women's Legal History Biography Project, Belva Ann Lockwood: For Peace, Justice, and President, (1997),
http://womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu/papers/LockwoodB-Cook97.pdf.
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n359. See Morello, supra note 41, at 34; see also Mrs. Lockwood's Victory, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 2, 1878, at 191; Women's Right to Practice in
the U.S. Courts, supra note 355.
n360. See Shall Women Be Admitted to the Bar?, supra note 355.
n361. Id.
n362. See Morello, supra note 41, at 34; Mrs. Lockwood's Victory, supra note 359.
n363. Women as Lawyers, supra note 355. Throughout Sargent's political and legal career, he was a champion of women's rights. A close friend of
Susan B. Anthony's, in 1878 he introduced the "Anthony Amendment" to Congress, the woman suffrage amendment that was ultimately enacted as
the nineteenth amendment in 1920. Flexner & Fitzpatrick, supra note 87, at 165.
n364. See Women as Lawyers, supra note 355.
n365. The Admission of Women to the Bar, supra note 355.
n366. See id.
n367. See id.
n368. See, e.g., Superior Court of Errors, Conn., Chi. Legal News, Oct. 21, 1882, at 54 (discussing the court decision and admission of Mary Hall
to the Connecticut bar); Women Lawyers, supra note 339 (discussing the admission of Nettie Cronise Lutes and her sister Florence Cronise to the
Ohio bar).
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n369. See Elizabeth K. Maurer, The Sphere of Carrie Burnham Kilgore, 65 Temp. L. Rev. 827, 833 (1992).
n370. See id. at 847.
n371. See id. at 842-44.
n372. See id. at 844-46.
n373. See id. at 844.
n374. See id. at 844; Court of Common Please, No. I, Pennsylvania: Mrs. Kilgore Refused Admission to the Bar, Chi. Legal News, Mar. 22, 1884,
at 217.
n375. See Maurer, supra note 369, at 847.
n376. See id.
n377. See id. at 848.
n378. Id. (citing A Disgusted Judge: Mrs. Kilgore Admitted to Practice Law in a Hostile Court, N.Y. Times, May 23, 1886, at 1).
n379. See A Woman Refused Admission to the Bar in Pa., supra note 340.
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n380. Id.
n381. Id.
n382. See generally Catherine Waugh McCulloch, Illinois Laws Concerning Women (1907) (outlining the rights women gained through law
reforms, but also describing the difficulties of enforcing those rights and the inequality of rights that persisted).
n383. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 70-71.
n384. See generally Robinson, supra note 164.
n385. See Keck & Sikkink, supra note 47, at 45-46.
n386. See id. at 55; Infra Part III.A.
n387. See Robinson, supra note 164, at 10.
n388. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 11-14.
n389. Myra Bradwell's publications in her Chicago Legal News on women's rights issues, and especially the work and efforts of women's lawyers
in particular, are the most dramatic examples of efforts to create a critical mass of support for women's rights. See Goddard, supra note 44, at 11214 (asserting that Bradwell used her Chicago Legal News to gain professional and popular support for women's equality through law reforms); see
also Ada M. Bittenbender, Woman in Law, 2 Chi. L. Times 301, 305 (1888) (discussing that the purposes of the Woman's International Bar
Association included "disseminating knowledge concerning women's legal status [and] securing better legal conditions for women").
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n390. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 270.
n391. See generally Martin, supra note 164.
n392. Id. at 86-87; see also Morello, supra note 41, at 37-38.
n393. Can Women Practice Law?, 1 L. Student's Helper 102, 102-103 (1893); see also Inez Haynes Irwin, Angels and Amazons: A Hundred Years
of American Women 172-80 (1933); Robinson, supra note 164, at 10; Edith Prouty, Women in the Law: Their Past, Present and Future, Woman's
J., Apr. 22, 1876.
n394. See generally Bittenbender, supra note 389.
n395. See id. at 309.
n396. See id. at 305.
n397. See id. See generally Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 135, 205.
n398. See Drachman, Sisters in Law supra note 42, at 66.
n399. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 1; Bittenbender, supra note 389, at 305.
n400. Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 2.
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n401. See Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement 15 (1997).
n402. See id.
n403. See id.
n404. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 133-37.
n405. Id. at 134.
n406. See Rupp, supra note 401, at 15.
n407. See id.
n408. See id. at 19.
n409. Leila J. Rupp, Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women's Organizations, 1888-1945, 99 Am. Hist. Rev. 1571, 1585
(1994).
n410. See Women in a Changing World: The Dynamic Story of the International Council of Women Since 1888, at 22-23 (1966).
n411. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 135-36.
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n412. See id. at 132-33; Bittenbender, supra note 389, at 305.
n413. Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 132.
n414. Id. at 133.
n415. See Women in a Changing World, supra note 410, at 3.
n416. Keck & Sikkink, supra note 47, at x.
n417. See id. at 45-46.
n418. See Bittenbender, supra note 389, at 305; Goddard, supra note 44, at 112-14. See generally Robinson, supra note 164.
n419. See Robinson, supra note 164, at 10.
n420. Id.
n421. Id.
n422. See infra Part III.B.
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n423. See generally Robert W. Rydell, World's Columbian Exposition, in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, 898, 898-902 (James R. Grossman et al.
eds., 2004).
n424. See Jeanne Madeline Weimann, The Fair Women 28 (1981).
n425. See The World's Congress of Representative Women, at xix-xxiv (May Wright Sewall ed., 1894).
n426. See Women in the Law Reform Congress, Chi. Legal News, Aug. 12, 1893, at 435.
n427. See Weimann, supra note 424, at 26-27.
n428. See id.
n429. See id. at 27.
n430. See infra notes 431-32.
n431. See also Weimann, supra note 424, at 30. See generally Margo Hobbs Thompson, Palmer, Bertha Honore, in Women Building Chicago,
supra note 44, at 661, 661-62.
n432. See Weimann, supra note 424, at 28-30, 58.
n433. See id. at 30.
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n434. See id. at 59-60.
n435. See id. at 40-43.
n436. See id. at 66.
n437. See id. at 67.
n438. See Legal Department Queen Isabella Association, Queen Isabella J. 4 (1892); see also Women Lawyers at the Isabella Club House, Chi.
Legal News, Aug. 12, 1893, at 451. See generally Program, Queen Isabella Association Law Department Meeting of Women Lawyers, August 3rd,
4th and 5th, 1893, in Queen Isabella Association Papers (on file with the Chicago History Museum) [hereinafter Program, Queen Isabella
Association].
n439. See Women Lawyers at the Isabella Club House, supra note 438.
n440. See generally id.
n441. Id.
n442. See id.
n443. See generally Program, Queen Isabella Association, supra note 438.
n444. See Women Lawyers at the Isabella Club House, supra note 438.
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n445. See id.
n446. See generally id.
n447. See Program, Queen Isabella Association, supra note 438.
n448. See James B. Bradwell, Women Lawyers of Illinois, Chi. Legal News, June 2, 1900, at 339. The other speakers in this session included an
introduction by Ohio lawyer Florence Cronise, and a speech Women Lawyers in Ancient Times by Massachusetts lawyer Mary A. Green. See
Program, Queen Isabella Association, supra note 438. Thirty women lawyers attended the meeting. Women Lawyers of Illinois, supra; see also
Program, Queen Isabella Association, supra note 438.
n449. See Women Lawyers at the Isabella Club House, supra note 438.
n450. See The World's Congress of Representative Women, supra note 425, at xix.
n451. See id.
n452. Id. at xxii.
n453. See id.
n454. Id. at 18.
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n455. See Keck & Sikkink, supra note 47, at x.
n456. See The World's Congress of Representative Women, supra note 425, at 20-22.
n457. See id. New York activist Lillie Devereux Blake and Kansan Eugenia T. St. John similarly discussed rights claims efforts in their states. See
id. at 430-32, 445.
n458. Id. at 424. This quote is from a second address Miller gave at the Congress entitled Work of the Franchise League. Id. at 420.
n459. See id. at 20-22.
n460. See id. at 439-45.
n461. See id.
n462. See Weimann, supra note 424, at 545 (illustrating the series of small congresses that were organized by Mary Eagle and held in the Woman's
Building in May 1893).
n463. Ada M. Bittenbender, Women in Law, in The National Exposition Souvenir: What America Owes to Women 390, 390 (Lydia Hoyt Farmer
ed., 1893).
n464. See Charlotte C. Holt, The Woman Who Has Come, in The Congress of Women 190, 190-92 (Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle ed., 1894).
n465. Id. at 192.
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n466. See id. at 191.
n467. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 21.
n468. See Women in the Law Reform Congress, supra note 426.
n469. See The Courts, Chi. Legal News, Aug. 12, 1893, at 427.
n470. See id.
n471. See Women in the Law Reform Congress, supra note 426.
n472. Id.
n473. See id.; see also World's Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, Chi. Legal News, Aug. 5, 1893, at 425 (listing the revised program of
speakers).
n474. See World's Congress on Jurisprudence and Law Reform, supra note 473; see also Barbara Allen Babcock, Women Defenders in the West, 1
Nev. L.J. 1, 18 (2001).
n475. See The Courts, supra note 469.
n476. See id.
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n477. See DuBois, supra note 24, at 34, 39 n.52; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 176-78 (describing McCulloch's role as a leader in the Illinois
suffrage movement and her authorship of the Illinois woman suffrage bill enacted in 1913).
n478. See DuBois, supra note 24, at 34.
n479. See supra note 477.
n480. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 253 tbl.2; Bar None: 125 Years of Women Lawyers in Illinois 32-33 (Gwen Hoerr
McNamee ed., 1998) (listing the first 101 women lawyers in Illinois by 1900).
n481. See Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 215-24 (arguing that experiences of sex discrimination discouraged women lawyers who
had hoped they would succeed in the profession because of their merit).
n482. See id. at 253 (outlining McCulloch's legislative efforts for women's guardianship rights, raising the age of consent, and woman suffrage);
Mary Linehan, McCulloch, Catharine Gouger Waugh, in Women Building Chicago, supra note 44, at 560, 560-62 (outlining McCulloch's efforts
for woman suffrage, mother's custody rights, and raising the age of consent).
n483. See Linehan, supra note 482, at 560-62; see also Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Chronology of the Woman's Rights Movement in Illinois 1-4
(1912) (detailing the legislative enactments that were moving women towards legal equality).
n484. See Drachman, Women Lawyers, supra note 42, at 251-53 (for description of McCulloch's law school and graduation and her relationship
with Catharine Waite); The Courts, supra note 469 (documenting that Bradwell and McCulloch worked together on the Committee of the Woman's
Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary on Jurisprudence and Law); see also Catharine Waugh McCulloch McCulloch, Myra Bradwell 7
(unpublished biographical sketch, on file with Grace H. Harte, Series III of the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1890-1945, Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University) (noting that she and Mary Ahrens were "two of [Bradwell's] sister lawyers" who sat on the committee of
the Chicago Bar Association formed to honor Myra Bradwell after her death).
n485. See Linehan, supra note 482, at 560.
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n486. See, e.g., Keyssar, supra note 142, at 202-03 (arguing that in the first decades of the twentieth century there emerged a mass movement of
diverse groups that converged to support woman suffrage).
n487. See, e.g., Grace Wilbur Trout, Early League History, in Chicago Political Equality League Annual 1895-1911, 58-59 (1911) (describing the
work of McCulloch, lawyer Charlotte Holt, and lawyer Ellen Martin in persuading the Chicago Woman's Club to assist in founding the Chicago
Political Equality League and the establishment of its Legislative Committee).
n488. For example, in 1877 Bradwell joined with a number of women and men already working for social and legal reforms, most prominently
Frances Willard, the leader of the Illinois Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and Elizabeth Boyton Harbert, president of the IWSA,
to found the Illinois Social Science Association (ISSA). The objective of the ISSA was to identify social problems and develop social and legal
reforms to address those problems. The women's rights activists within the mixed-sex organization persuaded the organization to support reforms
that advanced women's rights, including woman suffrage. See Buechler, supra note 90, at 122-23.
n489. See id. at 163.
n490. See Trout, supra note 487, at 58.
n491. Id. at 58-59.
n492. See id.
n493. See Legal Status of Women - Questions to Be Answered at the February Meeting, in Chicago Political Equality League Annual, supra note
487, 9-11; see also Buechler, supra note 90, at 162-66; McCulloch, supra note 483, at 1-4 (listing the law reforms Illinois women's rights activists
secured including: the first married women's property act (1861); the second, which allowed a married woman to control her own wages (1869); the
third, which abolished curtesy and established a dower right for each spouse (1874); women's right to work in all occupations and professions
(1872); women's right to hold school offices (1873); women's right to be Notaries Public (1875); a raise in the age a girl was deemed competent to
consent to sexual intercourse from ten to fourteen years (1887); the right to vote in school elections (1891); a prohibition on child labor (1891);
right to joint guardianship of children (1901); and a second raise in the age of consent to sixteen years (1905)).
n494. See Trout, supra note 487, at 58-62.
n495. See Selma Moidel Smith, A Century of Achievement: The Centennial of the National Association of Women Lawyers, 85 Women Law. J.
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18 (1999).
n496. See id. at 19.
n497. See A. Florence Joyce, "How We Started", in 75 Year History of National Association of Women Lawyers 1899-1974, at 13, 15 (Mary H.
Zimmerman ed., 1975).
n498. See id. at 13-14.
n499. See Adelman, supra note 292, at 425.
n500. See id.; Laura Miller Derry, Historiette of NAWL, in 75 Year History, supra note 497, at 23, 23.
n501. See Charlotte Adelman, WBAI 75: The First 75 Years 13 (1992).
n502. Catharine Waugh McCulloch 5 (unpublished biographical sketch, on file with Grace H. Harte, Series III of the Mary Earhart Dillon
Collection, 1890-1945, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University).
n503. See Adelman, supra note 292, at 425-26.
n504. See id. at 426-27.
n505. See Grace H. Harte, A Momentous Victory, 25 Women Law. J. 54, 54 (1939) (describing the way the WBAI worked with the Federation of
Women's Clubs, League of Women Voters, Parent-Teachers Congress, and the Business and Professional Women club on the issue of women jury
service).
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n506. Id.
n507. See Buechler, supra note 90, at 182.
n508. See Paul S. Boyer, McCulloch, Catharine Gouger Waugh, in 2 Notable American Women, supra note 44, at 459.
n509. See Letter from Catharine Waugh McCulloch to Mary Sumner Boyd (June 1, 1920) (on file with Catharine Waugh McCulloch, Series VI of
the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1869-1945, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University).
n510. See Harte, supra note 505, at 54 (arguing that the Women's Bar Association of Illinois (WBAI) was the leader in the women jury bill
campaign).
n511. See Cynthia Harrison, On Account of Sex: The Politics of Women's Issues 1945-1968, at 9-11 (1988); see also Becker, supra note 17, at
210.
n512. See, e.g., Smith, supra note 495, at 20 (arguing that NAWL members fought for "equality of justice for women").
n513. See Presidents Report, Women's Bar Association of Illinois (1936-37), Papers Box 7 file 3 (discussing WBAI's rejection of NAWL's
position in favor of the ERA).
n514. See generally Smith, supra note 495, at 21-22 (arguing that NAWL opposed protective labor legislation as early as 1927 and throughout the
1930s); Helen Hunt West, Nat'l Ass'n of Women Lawyers, Speech Given before the Resolutions Committee-Democratic Party Chicago, Illinois
(July 12, 1940) (arguing that the proposed Equal Rights Amendment will protect women workers).
n515. See Presidents Report, supra note 513 (discussing WBAI's rejection of NAWL's position in favor of the ERA); see also Grace H. Harte,
Notes of the Women's Bar Association, Chi. Daily L. Bull., Feb. 11, 1941 (outlining her proposed alternative ERA, which she modeled after the
English Sex Discrimination Act). This was distinct from the Taft-Wadsworth Bill proposed by ERA opponents in 1947. See also Harrison, supra
note 511, at 26-29 (explaining the Taft-Wadsworth bill).
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n516. Grace H. Harte, Notes of the Women's Bar Association, Chi. Daily L. Bull., Apr. 22, 1941 (noting that members of the WBAI were elected
as officers in the NWLA and that they continued to work on law reforms regarding women's rights in marriage and divorce.).
n517. See Harrison, supra note 511, at 28.
n518. See id.
n519. See id.; Becker, supra note 17, at 233-35; see also Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.§§2000e-1 to -16 (2006).
n520. See Becker, supra note 17, at 210, 216; Smith, supra note 495, at 28.
n521. See Becker, supra note 17, at 216.
n522. See id. at 216, 221-22.
n523. See id. at 218-19.
n524. See id. at 222.
n525. See id. at 234-35.
n526. See id. at 210.
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n527. See id. at 211-51, for a detailed account of the transformation. But see id. at 241-42 (describing how some radical feminists, who refused to
oppose the ERA, nonetheless maintained that it would not result in substantive equality).
n528. See Serena Mayeri, Constitutional Choices: Legal Feminism and the Historical Dynamics of Change, 92 Cal. L. Rev. 755, 758 (2004).
n529. See Harrison, supra note 511, at 192.
n530. See Mayeri, supra note 528, at 785-92, 794-96.
n531. See Leslie W. Gladstone, Women's Issues in Congress: Selected Legislation 1832-1998, in Women and Women's Issues in Congress 18322000, at 11-106 (Janet V. Lewis ed., 2001), for a list and description of federal laws that granted women rights through the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
n532. See, e.g., Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 690-91 (1973) (finding that denial of housing and medical benefits to the families of female
military officers was an equal protection violation); Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 76 (1971) (finding that a statute that required a preference for a
male administrator for a decedent's estate was an equal protection violation); see also Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Constitutional Adjudication in the
United States as a Means of Advancing the Equal Stature of Men and Women Under the Law, 26 Hofstra L. Rev. 263, 267-68 (1997).
n533. See United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 531 (1996) (applying a stronger "skeptical scrutiny" standard); Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190,
218 (1976) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (noting the majority introduced intermediate scrutiny as a midpoint between strict scrutiny and a rational
basis standard); Mayeri, supra note 528, at 827-34 (arguing the feminist strategy to use the Equal Protection Clause to secure equality and the
Court's interpretation of that clause limited the content of the equality); see also Reva B. Siegel, Text in Contest: Gender and the Constitution from
a Social Movement Perspective, 150 U. Pa. L. Rev. 297, 297-307 (2001) (arguing that although the ERA was never ratified, the amendment,
nonetheless, influenced the judges to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in a frame of formal equality rather than a substantive one).
n534. Mayeri, supra note 528, at 759.
n535. See generally Martha Albertson Fineman, The Illusion of Equality: The Rhetoric and Reality of Divorce Reform (1991); Catharine A.
MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979); Leslie Bender, Is Tort Law Male?: Foreseeability
Analysis and Property Managers' Liability for Third Party Rapes of Residents, 69 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 313 (1993); Sarah E. Burns, Is the Law Male?:
The Role of Experts, 69 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 389 (1993); Sylvia A. Law & Patricia Hennessey, Is the Law Male?: The Case of Family Law, 69 Chi.Kent L. Rev. 345 (1993); Dorothy E. Roberts, Rape, Violence, and Women's Autonomy, 69 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 359 (1993); Lynn Hecht Schafran, Is
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the Law Male?: Let Me Count the Ways, 69 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 397 (1993); Lynn Hecht Schafran, Is the Law Male?, Trial, Aug. 1995, at 18, 18-20.
n536. See, e.g., Smith, supra note 495, at 31-33 (celebrating NAWL efforts in the second half of the twentieth century to promote women lawyers
to the bench and celebrating NAWL efforts at increasing the role of women lawyers in the ABA ).
n537. See id.
n538. See Harte, supra note 159, at 141; see also The XIV Amendment and Our Case, supra note 200.
n539. Epstein, supra note 41, at 247 (arguing that legal professional associations are critical to the operation and direction of the legal profession).
n540. See Morello, supra note 41, at 194-217 (describing women lawyers' efforts to establish themselves within major law firms); id. at 218-47
(describing women lawyers' efforts to win judicial positions).
n541. See Thomas, supra note 44, at 225.
n542. 75 Year History, supra note 497, at 86.
n543. See Derry, supra note 500, at 23-24; Highlights of the Year 1942-43, in 75 Year History, supra note 497, at 108, 108.
n544. See Epstein, supra note 41, at 248 (asserting that the ABA admitted three black men by mistake in 1912 and subsequently changed the rules
to exclude all blacks until the 1940s); Beatrice A. Clephane, Women Have Won Recognition in the American Bar Association: With Statistics to
Prove It, 25 Women Law. J. 57 (1939).
n545. See Highlights of the Year 1942-43, supra note 543, at 108.
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n546. See Derry, supra note 500, at 23; Highlights of the Year 1942-43, supra note 543, at 108.
n547. Smith, supra note 495, at 32.
n548. ABA Comm'n on Women in the Profession, Commission Brochure 2 (2008-2009); http://www.abanet.org/women/CWP brochure 200809.pdf.
n549. See id.
n550. ABA Comm'n on Women in the Profession, Report to the House of Delegates 2 (1988).
n551. See, e.g., Norma J. Wikler, Water on Stone: A Perspective on the Movement to Eliminate Gender Bias in the Courts, Ct. Rev., Fall 1989, at
6, 6.
n552. See generally Barbara Allen Babcock, Introduction: Gender Bias in the Courts and Civic and Legal Education, 45 Stan. L. Rev. 2143
(1993).
n553. See ABA Comm'n on Women in the Profession, Unfinished Business: Overcoming the Sisyphus Factor (1995); see also ABA Comm'n on
Women in the Profession, Charting Our Progress: The Status of Women in the Profession Today 4 (2006).
n554. Charting Our Progress, supra note 553, at 4.
n555. See supra note 15.
n556. See Larry Berkson, Women on the Bench: A Brief History, 65 Judicature 286, 287, 290-92 (1982).
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n557. Linehan, supra note 482, at 561-62.
n558. Gwen Hoerr McNamee, Bartelme, Mary Margaret, in Women Building Chicago, supra note 44, at 66, 68.
n559. Morello, supra note 41, at 234.
n560. Drachman, Sisters in Law, supra note 42, at 207.
n561. See Gil Troy, Why Ronald Reagan Picked Sandra Day O'Connor - And Why George W. Bush Might Want to Follow His Example, HNN,
July 1, 2005, http://hnn.us/articles/12821.html (arguing that Reagan appointed O'Connor because, although she supported the ERA, she was not an
activist).
n562. See Beverly Blair Cook, Allen, Florence Ellinwood, in Notable American Women: The Modern Period 11, 12 (Barbara Sicherman et al.
eds., 1980); McNamee, supra note 558, at 68.
n563. See Barbara Palmer, "To Do Justly": The Integration of Women into the American Judiciary, 34 PS: Pol. Sci. & Pol. 235, 237 (2001)
(arguing that their research consistently shows that "female judges tend to be the strongest supporters of women's rights claims, regardless of their
ideology").
n564. President Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993. See The Supreme Court Historical Soc'y, Timeline of
the Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, http://www.supremecourthistory.org/history/supremecourthistory history current ginsburg (last visited June 26,
2009).
n565. See Report to the House of Delegates, supra note 550, at 6; see also Charting Our Progress, supra note 553, at 5.
n566. See infra Part IV.C.
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n567. See generally Keck & Sikkink, supra note 47, at 16-18, 39-41.
n568. See Women in a Changing World, supra note 410, at 349 app. 10 (listing the ICW meetings from 1888 to 1963). From 1888 to 1934, the
ICW met roughly every five years. From 1936 to 1963, it met just about every three years, except during World War II. The ICW suspended
meetings after 1938 until 1947.
n569. See id. at 178-81.
n570. See infra notes 571-79.
n571. See Susan M. Hartmann, Kenyon, Dorothy, in Notable American Women: The Modern Period, supra note 562, at 395, 396.
n572. See id.
n573. See Derry, supra note 500, at 23-24.
n574. U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 3.; see also Rupp, supra note 401, at 222-23.
n575. See Women in a Changing World, supra note 410, at 179 (documenting the ICW's commitment to the CSW); Smith, supra note 495, at 24
(describing Kenyon's appointment to the CSW as evidence of NAWL's commitment to women throughout the world).
n576. See Dorothy Kenyon, United Nations Commission on Status of Women, 33 Women Law. J. 37, 38 (1947).
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n577. Id.
n578. Id.
n579. Id. at 39-40, 43 (arguing that the CSW committee went beyond the League of Nations' work as it investigated not just the laws that affected
women, but also the ways the laws were applied and the influence of custom).
n580. See Hartmann, supra note 571, at 396.
n581. Kenyon, supra note 576, at 38.
n582. See id. at 40-42 (describing the information was gathered from studies and reports conducted by member countries on the legal status of
women in their countries and a plan for regional conferences conducted by the Commission).
n583. See id. at 43.
n584. Id.
n585. See Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women, http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/CSW60YRS/CSWbriefhistory.pdf (last
visited June 26, 2009). The U.N. Commission on Human Rights initially established the CSW as a sub-commission. Id. at 1-2. During its first few
months, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granted some feminists requests to transform the sub-commission to a full commission. Id.
Other feminists opposed, distinguishing and separating women's issues from general human rights issues. See Rupp, supra note 401, at 223-24.
n586. See Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women, supra note 585, at 4-5.
n587. See id. at 5.
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n588. See id. at 5-6.
n589. Id. at 7-8, 10 (explaining CEDAW began as a Declaration, adopted by the General Assembly in 1967). It was elevated to a convention in
order to make the measure legally binding. Id. at 10.
n590. See A. Riles, The Virtual Sociality of Rights: The Case of 'Women's Rights are Human Rights', in Transnational Legal Processes 420, 422,
425 (Michael Likosky ed., 2002) (arguing that the group included Charlotte Bunch, Director of the Center for Global Women's Leadership, Anne
Walker, Director of International Tribune Center, and Bella Abzug, President of Women's Environment and Development Organization). See also
Rupp, supra note 401, at 224-25; Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women, supra note 585, at 9 -12.
n591. See Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women, supra note 585, at 9.
n592. See id. at 8-9, 11-12.
n593. See id. at 9-13.
n594. See id. at 13-14.
n595. See id. at 13-15.
n596. See Riles, supra note 590, at 420-35.
n597. Charlotte Bunch, Organizing for Women's Human Rights Globally, in Ours By Right: Women's Rights as Human Rights 141, 141-149
(Joanna Kerr ed., 1993). See also Charlotte Bunch, Samantha Frost & Niamh Reilly, Making the Global Local: International Networking for
Women's Rights, in 1 Women and International Human Rights Law 91, 91-113 (Kelly D. Askin & Dorean M. Koenig eds., 1999).
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n598. See Joanna Kerr, The Context and the Goal, in Ours By Right, supra note 597, at 3, 6-8 (describing the presentation of the argument that
women's rights are human rights at the "Linking Hands" conference in Toronto, Canada in 1992); see also Arvonne S. Fraser, Becoming Human:
The Origins and Development of Women's Human Rights, 21 Hum. Rts. Q. 853, 903-04 (1999) (arguing that women's rights as human rights was
prominent theme at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna and at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing).
n599. See Kerr, supra note 598, at 6.
n600. Id.
n601. Id.
n602. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Women's Rights are Human Rights (Sept. 5, 1995) (transcript available at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Hillary%20Clinton%20-%20Womens%20Rights.pdf).
n603. Id. at 3-5.
n604. Id. at 1.
n605. Id. at 2.
n606. See Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women, supra note 585, at 15.
n607. McCulloch, supra note 382, at 5.
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n608. See McCulloch, supra note 483, at 1-4. (listing the law reform advances in Illinois 1855 to 1913).
n609. See Harrison, supra note 511, at xii (arguing that in the two decades after World War II, a small group of women's rights activists laid the
foundation for the second wave of feminism and the policy changes enacted in the late 1960s that enhanced women's rights).
n610. See Mayeri, supra note 528, at 757 (arguing that in the 1960s and 1970s legal feminists debated and then united over a dual strategy of
constitutional amendment and reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to secure sex equality).
n611. See, e.g., McCulloch, supra note 382, at 5 (arguing that the law reforms secured for women did not in practice secure women's legal
equality).
n612. See Mayeri, supra note 528, at 758-60.
n613. See Becker, supra note 17, at 253 (listing among women's inequalities: the wage gap, sex-segregated jobs, the second-shift, domestic
violence, sexual abuse, credibility, religious and sports participation, and political office); see also Mayeri, supra note 528, at 757-58.
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